And speaking of EMPIRES, and armies and corrupt, rapacious politicians ........

war stories Military analysis.

"Who's in the Army Now? - Why we can't send more troops to Iraq."

By Fred Kaplan

Posted Thursday, June 30, 2005, at 3:21 PM PT

As we're often told, 1 million men and women serve in the U.S. Army.

So, why is it such a strain to keep a mere 150,000 in Iraq?

What are the other 850,000 doing?

Why can't some of them be sent there, too?

And if they really can't be spared from their current tasks, what broader inferences can be drawn about America's military policy?

Should we bring back the draft to provide more boots on the ground—or, alternatively, scale back our global ambitions so fewer boots will be needed?

First, let's look at those million soldiers.

Who are they?

The Web site GlobalSecurity.org has a pie chart breaking them down into categories.

It turns out that fewer than 40 percent of them—391,460—are combat soldiers.

And fewer than 40 percent of those combat soldiers—149,406—are members of the active armed forces. (The rest are in the National Guard and Army Reserve.)

The others are support and logistics troops—50,252 in transportation, 37,763 in medical, 34,270 in the training and doctrine command, and so forth.

The distinctions are not ironclad.

Transportation soldiers, for example, get shot at and shoot back.

Still, however you define it, a strikingly small percentage of the million-man Army consists of active soldiers whose principal job is to fight.

These combat soldiers are organized into brigades (between 3,000 and 4,000 in each).

The Army now has 37 active combat brigades—10 in Iraq, one in South Korea (another one, which used to be there, is now among the 10 in Iraq), and one in Afghanistan.

That's 12 brigades deployed to hot spots.

What about the other 25?

Nine have recently returned from Iraq or Afghanistan (the rule is 12 months out, 12 months back home—though some units have seen their overseas tours stretched); 15 are in training; one is reconstituting around the new Stryker combat vehicle.

It would be possible to put a few more of these brigades on the battlefield.

Soldiers could be given less training and be allowed less time at their home bases.

But the chiefs know that if they did that, they would soon have a disgruntled, ill-prepared Army—and a smaller Army, too, since such strains would torpedo recruitment and re-enlistment rates, which even now are falling well below target.

(Soldiers and civilians might feel differently if the war in Iraq were truly a war of national survival or a titanic struggle of civilizations. During World War II, after all, millions were perfunctorily trained before shipping out to Europe or the Pacific, and they stayed there for years until the fighting was over. But the stakes of the present war are far less momentous.)

The fact is, the U.S. Army has substantially shrunk since the Cold War ended 15 years ago—to the point where it simply cannot fulfill the Bush administration's global dreams.

The Army is making some adjustments to fill the gap—mainly by restructuring its brigades so that each one has more combat troops and fewer support-and-service personnel.

This process has been going on for a couple of years now.

Once the process is complete, the Army will have 43 or possibly 48 combat brigades (in 2000, it had 33)—each brigade smaller but loaded with 20 percent to 30 percent more fighting power.

With this reorganization, the Army will be able to maintain its current level of troops in Iraq without having to rely so heavily on the Guard and Reserve. (According to an Army spokesman, the last time U.S. troops rotated into Iraq, they consisted of 10 brigades from the active Army and seven brigades from the reserves. The next rotation, later this year, will consist of 15 active brigades and just two from the reserves.)

John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, describes the result of the restructuring this way: "We'll be able to fight the war we're fighting, indefinitely."

In short, it's a smart gap-filler, but little more.

It won't allow George W. Bush to send more troops to Iraq or Afghanistan, much less to other countries that he might like to liberate.

So, how do we get more troops?

A return to the draft?

There are plenty of arguments for or against, but they're not worth the waste of bandwidth, because it's just not going to happen.

Military commanders don't want a draft; they're happy to have, in the All-Volunteer Army, the best-educated, best-tempered, most easily trained soldiers in American history.

Politicians don't want a draft, because they know it's the surest route to losing the next election; millions of supportive voters will turn into raging protesters if their little Johnny—or, worse yet, Janie—gets forced into battle.

Almost no one in the executive branch wants a draft, because it would instantly give every American family a stake in U.S. foreign policy.

With a volunteer Army, issues of war and peace are almost abstract; only a tiny portion of the population is directly affected.

With a draft, everybody's life is on the line—a turbulent state that can energize and unify a country under serious threat but tear the same country apart in a war of stalemate or dubious motive.

President Bush could not possibly want the intense debate that even the prospect of a draft would inspire.

And yet, draft or no draft, the country is headed toward that debate.

Does America want to be—can it be—the world's policeman, colossus, liberator, call it what you will?

If so, with what resources?

By itself or with allies?

Through international law or by whim?

Whatever the answers, there is a potentially calamitous mismatch between the Bush administration's avowed intentions and its tangible means.

They can print or borrow money to float the national debt.

They can't clone or borrow soldiers to float an imperial army.

"Kids to hear evolution's 'flip side' - Adirondack school allows annual lectures from creationist who says Darwin's theory is flawed"

By RICK KARLIN, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Wednesday, July 6, 2005

HORICON -- Ron Cote, who describes himself as a born-again creationist, has obtained permission to give annual guest lectures to students at the North Warren High School in the Adirondack community of Chestertown.

Cote doesn't disagree with the idea that students should learn about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

And he realizes that prohibitions on bringing religion into the classroom mean that he can't talk about his evangelical Christian faith.

"I'm not there to convert people," Cote said during an interview in the spacious hillside A-frame he shares with his wife in this rural community near the Schroon River.

"I'm there to get them to think about the flip side of evolution."

Sunday will mark the 80th anniversary of the Scopes "Monkey Trial," in which a high school biology teacher was convicted of teaching evolution in violation of Tennessee law.

The case pitted biblical belief that the Earth was literally created in seven days against the scientific view that species evolved over millennia by natural selection.

The courtroom drama captivated the nation and secured an indelible spot in history textbooks.

Darwin's theory of natural selection remains one of the underpinnings of biological science, but the battle with religious creationists rages on.

In recent years, state and local school boards in Kansas, Georgia and Pennsylvania have fought over whether students should also be exposed to alternate, religion-based theories.

In New York, Assemblyman Daniel Hooker, a Republican from Saugerties, proposed a bill that would support teaching alternatives to evolution, such as intelligent design, but the measure died early on.

Much of the current battle focuses on efforts to teach intelligent design, which posits that instead of random genetic mutations combined with natural selection, species evolve according to a master plan by a creator.

Adherents of this theory say the natural world is too complex and intricate to have evolved randomly.

Mainstream scientists and educators, including a long list of organizations such as the National Science Teachers Association, are aghast.

They say classic evolutionary theory is well documented and to pull away from it would be to turn the clock back.

"School districts would do well to be wary of this," Glenn Branch said of intelligent design or other theories that dispute Darwin.

The deputy director of the Oakland, Calif.-based National Center for Science Education, Branch also said that evolution and a belief in God don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Cote, though, believes they are.

A scientist by training, Cote, 73, spent decades as a manager for United Technologies Corp. in the early phases of the biotechnology industry, helping NASA to develop life-support devices used by the first moon walkers and later managing a program to design and build dialysis machines.

He has a clear command of biological topics and believes evolution should be taught, but as a theory.

And he's not without humor -- he wears a watch depicting the various stages of human evolution, from ape to Neanderthal to modern man.

When he approached the North Warren school board two years ago, he explained that lots of kids in the area learn in their churches that there is a creator, yet evolution presupposes no such thing.

His lectures, he maintained, could help reconcile those conflicting ideas.

He said he doesn't teach intelligent design, per se, during his once-a-semester, 45-minute in-classroom talk, but focuses instead on what he terms holes in evolutionary theory.

He questions the veracity of some fossils that play a key role in evolutionary studies.

Cote appears to be exploiting the built-in vagueness that exists in the state's education regulations.

While students must take Regents exams to graduate from high school, and to pass biology they need to know about evolution, local school boards technically have the final word over what is taught.

New York state doesn't even dictate which textbooks local districts should buy, noted James Dawson, a member of the Board of Regents who represents the North Warren district.

Dawson declined to say whether he thought Cote's lectures were a good idea.

But he said he has encountered some of the dilemmas that arise when a literal interpretation of the Bible runs up against evolutionary theory.

Dawson teaches geology at the State University of College at Plattsburgh, where instruction on evolution and fossils has sparked concern in his classroom.

"I have had students in that class over the years who have been fairly fundamentalist," Dawson said.

"They usually come up to me and say, 'I have a real hard time with this.'"

His response is that they should know about evolutionary theory even if they don't believe it.

For Dawson, an individual's religious faith is not the issue.

"My job is to teach to the standards," he said.

"If they learn it, they will be all right."

Livyjr,
No state is immune from these people who are determined to attach religious views to scientific theories. I guess they feel that science is the enemy of religion, detaching learners from spiritual knowledge so they feel compelled to fill in the gaps. Makes me CRAZY!!!

True true true.

The only thing we can do is:

1. Analyze foreign debt on a case-by-case basis and offer debt relief ONLY where the Government of that country has shown convincingly that it won't repeat its mistakes. We should be cognizant of the fact that, under the cold war paradigm, WE and the USSR encouraged the arms race as well as supported people like Mobutu.

2. Stop subsidizing Ag exports from rich countries (USA and Europe). Let the African nations get into the food export business. Let the American sell them tractors.

Catch a man a fish, he eats for one day!

Teach a man to fish, and help him get a pole to do so, and then, you can relax afterwards, because he can catch his own fish then!

And by relaxing, you also conserve the energy that you would have needed to whip the man before, because he was bugging you about being hungry, when all you wanted to do was rest!

"Dennis Builds Toward Hurricane Strength"

By LEONARDO ALDRIDGE, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 38 minutes ago

LES CAYES, Haiti - Tropical Storm Dennis flooded roads in Haiti and Jamaica and built toward hurricane strength Wednesday, pushing oil prices sharply higher as it became the second storm to threaten petroleum output in the Gulf of Mexico.

A hurricane warning was posted for eastern Cuba including the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, where some 520 terror suspects are detained.

Forecasters also warned Dennis was on track for the Alabama-Florida coastline.

Some rural Jamaicans were cut off by floodwaters hours before the storm was to pass, and authorities planned to fly over the affected southeast area in a helicopter to search for stranded islanders.

Dennis came right behind Tropical Storm Cindy, which made landfall late Tuesday in Louisiana and hindered oil production and refining.

Traders said that uncertainty over both storms helped to push oil prices to new highs.

Crude oil for August delivery rose $1.69 to settle at $61.28 a barrel and establish a new record on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The previous closing high was $60.54 set June 27.

Packing sustained winds of 65 mph, the fourth storm of the Atlantic season could dump up to 12 inches of rain over mountains in its path, including Jamaica's coffee-producing Blue Mountains, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Last year three hurricanes — Frances, Ivan and Jeanne — tore through the Caribbean with a collective ferocity not seen in many years, causing hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in damages.

Inside the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, the military prepared audio tapes in at least eight languages warning that a storm was coming and heavy steel shutters would be closed on some cell windows, said Col. Mike Bumgarner.

Military officials had no immediate plans to evacuate troops or detainees at Camp Delta, which is about 150 yards from the ocean but was built to withstand winds up to 90 mph, according to Navy Cmdr. Anne Reese, supervisor of camp maintenance and construction.

Power lines could be knocked down and roofs could be damaged on some older, wooden buildings, Reese said.

"It will be bad, but it's not going to be very destructive," she said.

Meteorologist Chris Hennon said the quadrant threatening Haiti "is typically the worst part of the storm" in terms of wind strength and rains.

Haiti took the deadliest hit of last year's hurricane season when Jeanne, at the time a tropical storm, triggered flooding and mudslides: 1,500 people were killed, 900 missing and presumed dead and 200,000 left homeless.

Poverty-stricken Haitians said there was little they could do about the warnings this time.

"It's not only that we don't have money to prepare, we don't have money either to eat."

"We are willing to stay here and let whatever happens happen," said Martine Louis-Pierre, a 43-year-old mother of three selling fried food on a street of Port-au-Prince.

At 5 p.m. EDT, the storm was centered about 135 miles south of the Hispaniola coast where Haiti and Dominican Republic share a border, moving west-northwest near 14 mph, the Hurricane Center said.

Storm-force winds stretched 105 miles.

Hurricane warnings were also posted for Jamaica and Haiti's southwest peninsula.

Hurricane watches were in effect for Cayman Islands and the southern Dominican Republic was on tropical storm watch.

Private forecaster AccuWeather has the storm tracking into the eastern Gulf of Mexico, with landfall Friday or Saturday on the Florida-Alabama border as a strong Category 2 or Category 3 hurricane, with winds from 96 mph to 130 mph.

Radio stations in Haiti and Jamaica warned people to stay away from rivers that could overflow their banks.

Some southern roads in Haiti, which is dangerously deforested, already were blocked by flooding Wednesday.

Six small communities in the eastern Jamaica parish of St. Thomas were also cut off by flood waters, emergency management spokeswoman Nadene Newsome said.

Jamaica's Prime Minister P.J. Patterson abandoned the final day of the annual Caribbean summit in St. Lucia, to rush home.

Before leaving, he went on Jamaican national radio to say "I call upon every Jamaican and every community to be prepared ... to protect those who are infirm, the elderly and the young."
___

Associated Press Writers Ben Fox in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Stevenson Jacobs in Kingston, Jamaica, contributed to this report.

And speaking of that zany George W. Bush that we have come to know and love, pratfalling his way through history as he bankrupts OUR America, and threatens to set the world itself on fire ......

"Bush Falls Off Bike in Scotland"

53 minutes ago

GLENEAGLES, Scotland - President Bush collided with a local police officer and fell during a bike ride on the grounds of the Gleneagles golf resort while attending a meeting of world leaders Wednesday.

Bush suffered scrapes on his hands and arms that required bandages by the White House physician, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

The police officer was taken to a local hospital as a precaution, McClellan said.

Police said the officer suffered a "very minor" ankle injury.

It was raining lightly at the time.

The officer was on a security detail.

He is a member of the police department of Strathclyde, a nearby town, McClellan said.

The president was concerned about the officer's condition, and talked with him for some time after the collision, McClellan said.

The president also asked White House physician Richard Tubb to monitor the officer's condition at the hospital.

The fall did not affect the president's schedule.

Dressed in a tuxedo, he attended a dinner hosted by Queen Elizabeth at the annual Group of Eight economic summit.

He showed no signs of distress.

were pretzels involved?

I was thinking about this, this morning, what exactly did happen over there with this international incident of George W. Bush riding down this Scottish cop as he did.

I was wondering if maybe George W. Bush was showing Putin and Chirac how he rides down jack-a-lopes with his bike, down on the ranch there in Crawford, and the cop just broke in the wrong direction, and so got run down, or maybe George W. Bush ran him down on purpose, to demonstrate his martial spirit to Berlusconi, and maybe some of the wait staff, or maybe George W. Bush was going to show off some of his goat-roping skills, and he had the cop out there running around like a goat, and the end of George's lariat got caught in his sprocket, or something .....

But I don't think he had a pretzel in his mouth, this time, anyway; I think his handlers know better than to let him out now, without checking his mouth real good to see what is in there ....

Kind of reminds me of Gerald Ford, in a way, except, of course, Gerald knocked people down at a distance with his errant golf balls ....

"G-8 leaders remain split on global warming - Blair, Bush unable to narrow differences; African debt relief also on agenda"

July 6: The leaders of the Group of Eight nations arrived in a Scottish resort town for their annual summit.

Updated: 4:47 a.m. ET July 7, 2005

GLENEAGLES, Scotland - British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush said Thursday they were unable to narrow differences between the United States and other major industrial countries over how to tackle global warming.

“There is no point in going back over the Kyoto debate,” Blair said at Bush’s side after a breakfast meeting between the two leaders.

Blair had sought to do just that at this year’s Group of Eight nations economic summit.

As summit host, Blair wanted the United States, along with the other countries, to set specific targets for reduction of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that many scientists believe are responsible for global warming.

The United States is the only G-8 country that has refused to ratify the Kyoto agreement which set forth targets for reducing greenhouse gases. The international treaty took effect in February.

“Now is the time to get beyond the Kyoto protocol and develop a strategy forward,” Bush said.

Seeking to emphasize areas of agreement, Bush praised Blair for inviting China, India and other developing countries to the summit and its discussions of climate change.

The president says the Kyoto treaty, aside from being bad for the U.S. economy, is seriously flawed because it does not include developing countries such as China and India.

Well aware of the impasse with the United States over global warming, Blair has tried to shift the debate toward increasing support for emissions controls in China.

“You made a wise move, Mr. Prime Minister,” Bush said.

Bush said he would stick to what he has previously supported — a reduction in U.S. emissions by roughly 18 percent.

“The goal of the United States is to neutralize and then reduce greenhouse gases,” he said.

“We are now developing the better way forward.”

In search of consensus

Blair, appearing resigned to failure on achieving specific emissions targets, said he hoped to get back on a path to consensus by the time Kyoto expires in 2012.

“Everybody has got their positions on the existing Kyoto and that is not going to change,” he said.

Bush brushed off a question on China’s proposal to acquire U.S. oil giant Unocal, saying there was already a process in the government to review the takeover of American companies by foreign interests on the grounds of national security.

“There is a process in the United States that our government uses” to analyze such deals, Bush said.

African debt relief

Bush and his wife, Laura, arrived in Scotland hours before the summit opened with a dinner for G-8 leaders hosted by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth.

The last leg of the journey, from the airport in Glasgow, was by helicopter.

As part of G-8 agenda on African debt relief, Bush, Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin held separate meetings with U2 singer Bono, a campaigner for African aid.

Blair has challenged G-8 countries to double aid to Africa to $50 billion by 2010, from the current $25 billion.

“A lot has been accomplished but there is no sense that a real deal, a $50 billion number, we are not there on that,” Bono said, speaking of Blair’s goal.

Blair also made a joint appearance with Bob Geldof, organizer of last weekend’s Live 8 concerts that were held to pressure G-8 leaders to do more to fight poverty and disease in Africa, and Bono.

“You’ve got to be prepared to hold out for what is right,” Blair said when questioned about reports that Britain was preparing to scale back its demands on support for Africa and climate change in the face of U.S. opposition — and to help present a united front by summit’s end.

"Last Shuttle Flight Made Clouds Over Antarctica"

Michael Schirber, Staff Writer, SPACE.com

Wed Jul 6, 3:05 PM ET

High altitude clouds were detected over Antarctica shortly after the fateful launch of the space shuttle Columbia.

The fact that some of these clouds are born out of shuttle exhaust may require a rethinking of their role as a diagnostic for global climate change.

Researchers using satellite and ground-based instruments tracked the exhaust plume from Columbia's liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Jan. 16, 2003.

The plume was roughly 650 miles long and two miles wide.

"Our analysis shows that the Columbia's exhaust plume approached the South Pole three days after launch," said Michael Stevens from the Naval Research Laboratory.

As with all shuttle launches, about 97 percent of this exhaust turns into water - a by-product of the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel.

The resulting 400 tons of extra water in the atmosphere has an observable effect on cloud formation.

Other rocket launches inject water into the atmosphere, but none so much as the shuttle launch vehicles.

Because of low temperatures and the high concentrations of water from Columbia's exhaust, Stevens and his colleagues observed a significant increase in polar mesospheric clouds over Antarctica in the days following the launch.

Polar mesospheric clouds - also called noctilucent clouds - form in the summer over the poles at altitudes of about 52 miles (84 kilometers), making them the highest clouds in the Earth's atmosphere.

They have been monitored in recent years because they are thought to be sensitive to the temperature and humidity of the atmosphere.

"Because the brightness, occurrence, and range of the clouds have been increasing, some scientists have suggested that they are indicators of global climate change," said Xinzhao Chu from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"That role needs to be reconsidered, however, because of the potential influence of water vapor in shuttle plumes."

Shuttle missions have been on hold since 2003, after Columbia and its crew were lost during reentry.

The return to flight is scheduled for July 13 of this year.

A paper describing these results appears in the July 6 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

There has been no proof that George W. Bush was guilty of riding down that Scottish cop. Reliable sources have come forth to state the it was the Scottish cop who JUMPED in the path of der Bush's bike, thereby causing the accident and POTENTIALLY causing great physical and/or psychological harm to the Great Emperor.

As Dan Quayle would have said, "I reject the allegation, and I demand to confront the alligator."

Well, there goes that guy's law enforcement career, then!

He would have been better off in the end if he had played a goat for George W. Bush, so that George W. Bush could show Chirac and Putin how he ropes goats off a bike down there on the ranch in Crawford, Texas!

Uh, let's see here, kids, ah, little Johnny, how about answering me this, then; if you take 400 tons of water, which is, let's see here, say, 800,000 pounds of water, and you somehow contrive to get all that water up into the upper earth atmosphere, what is going to be the fate of that water?

[sounds of pencil scribbling on a piece of paper, as a calculater whirls and clicks through a series of polynomial eqautions]

"Well,", says little Johnny, "if that water was not originally from there, and you somehow throw it up there, well, water being water, it's coming back down, uh, let's see, how about right about now?"

"Florida declares emergency as Hurricane Dennis nears"

1 hour, 13 minutes ago

MIAMI (AFP) - Florida governor Jeb Bush declared a state of emergency, warning that Hurricane Dennis could cause a "major disaster" in the southeastern US state that was pummeled by four such storms last year.

At the same time, authorities ordered the evacuation of all non-residents in the Florida Keys, which forecasters say could be hit by the increasingly powerful hurricane this weekend.

Governor Bush, a brother of the US president, called for the evacuation of high-risk areas, saying there was "an immediate danger to the lives and property of the residents of those communities."

"I hereby find that Hurricane Dennis threatens the state of Florida with a major disaster."

"I therefore declare that a state of emergency exists in the state of Florida," he said in a statement.

The declaration clears the way for mandatory evacuations, the deployment of personnel and resources, and the opening of emergency shelters.

The governor pointed out that the threatened communities in Florida "continue their efforts to recover from the 2004 hurricane season, leaving them more vulnerable to harm."

The four hurricanes that slammed Florida last year caused billions of dollars in damages.

Dennis packed sustained winds of up to 175 kilometers (110 miles) per hour Thursday, and the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said it was likely to continue gathering strength and become a "major hurricane."

At 1800 GMT Thursday, the center of the storm was located 105 kilometers (65 miles) northeast of Kingston, Jamaica, and forecasters expected it to pummel Jamaica and Cuba before heading toward the Florida Keys and the US coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Local authorities in the Florida Keys, a chain of southeastern US islands linked to the mainland by a series of bridges and a single road, ordered the evacuation of all non-residents, as well as recreational vehicles, and shut down campgrounds and state parks.

Boy, those Bush boys got it coming, and going, it seems ....

"Uzbekistan reconsiders hosting U.S air base - Foreign Ministry says base was intended only for post-Sept. 11 efforts"

Updated: 3:01 p.m. ET July 7, 2005

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - Uzbekistan indicated Thursday that it was reconsidering the future of a U.S. air base it hosts, threatening a key support base for the U.S.-led efforts in neighboring Afghanistan.

The move, which throws into doubt the American military presence in the Central Asian nation, follows an increasing chill in relations between Washington and the authoritarian Uzbek leader Islam Karimov.

The Foreign Ministry said the air base at Karshi-Khanabad, which U.S. forces use to support operations and supply humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, was only intended for combat operations in Afghanistan during the overthrow of the Taliban regime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"Any other prospects for a U.S. military presence in Uzbekistan were not considered by the Uzbek side," the ministry said in a statement.

U.S. offered no compensation, Uzbeks say

Uzbekistan also claimed that the United States hadn't paid takeoff and landing fees for all flights to and from the base, and had offered virtually no compensation for additional costs incurred by the Uzbek authorities for guarding the base, new infrastructure, ecological damage and inconvenience to the local population.

"In the view of the Foreign Ministry of Uzbekistan, these considerations should be central to examining the prospects of the future presence of the U.S. military force at the Khanabad air base," the statement concluded.

On Tuesday, a regional alliance led by China and Russia and including Uzbekistan called for the United States and its coalition allies in Afghanistan to set a date for withdrawing from several states in Central Asia, reflecting growing unease at America's military presence in the region.

U.S.-led military forces have been deployed at air bases in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to back up the anti-terrorist campaign in neighboring Afghanistan.

According to the U.S. military, Uzbekistan hosts at least 800 U.S. troops, while 1,200 U.S.-led troops are in Kyrgyzstan.

Some 200 French air force personnel are based in Tajikistan.

No deadline set in Washington

In Washington, several U.S. officials rejected the calls for a deadline.

On Wednesday, U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan John Ordway said coalition operations in Afghanistan "are ongoing and will be for some time to come."

"Unfortunately, there are a number of challenges remaining in Afghanistan, and the military contingents there remain essential in the struggle to provide that security and stability," Ordway told reporters in the Kazakh commercial capital Almaty.

Uzbekistan's ties with the United States and other Western nations have sharply deteriorated since it came under international condemnation for the harsh suppression of a May uprising in the eastern city of Andijan.

Uzbek authorities say 176 people died and deny that government troops fired on unarmed civilians but rights activists say as many as 750 may have been killed.

Karimov put restrictions on the U.S. air base — located in southern Uzbekistan about 112 miles from the Afghan border — after Washington joined calls by other Western nations for an international probe into the Andijan massacre.

And speaking of George W. Bush not knowing whether he is afoot or horse back ....

"Iraq calls for ‘new page' in relations with Tehran - Bold plans for greater military cooperation discussed between old foes"

Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami, right, talks with Iraqi Defense Minister, Saadoun al-Duleimi, during their official meeting in Tehran on Thursday.

Updated: 11:46 a.m. ET July 7, 2005

TEHRAN, Iran - Iraq’s defense minister said Thursday that ousted leader Saddam Hussein was the aggressor in the 1980-88 war against Iran, as the two former enemies announced plans for closer cooperation between their militaries.

Iraqi Defense Minister Saadoun al-Duleimi’s visit to Iran marked a new effort to build ties between Iraq and mainly Shiite Muslim Iran after a Shiite-dominated government came to power in Baghdad this year.

“We’ve come here to open a new page in our relations against the painful page of the past,” al-Duleimi told reporters at a press conference with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Shamkhani.

Shamkhani said Iran and Iraq would form joint committees to work out cooperation on cleaning minefields and “modernizing Iraq’s army.”

“No one can prevent this cooperation,” Shamkhani insisted, without elaborating on the extent of the cooperation.

The United States — Iran’s No. 1 enemy — is helping build Iraq’s military and security forces and would likely oppose any Iranian intervention.

But the warm talk reflected the sympathies toward Tehran from the new Baghdad government, where several parties long tied to Iran hold sway.

Old aggression blamed on Saddam

Al-Duleimi on Thursday promised that Iraq would no longer be a threat to its neighbors and he acknowledged that Saddam’s regime was responsible for starting the bloody 1980-88 war against Iran, in which one million people died.

He pointed to the “painful past that led to the victimization of many people from both nations by Saddam.”

“Our Iranian brothers have overcome the pains caused by Saddam, but our nation is still suffering from the unfair decisions by Saddam,” he said.

Saddam, who was captured in December 2003, is facing a wide range of charges including killing his opponents, gassing Kurds, invading Kuwait in 1990 and suppressing Kurdish and Shiite uprisings against his rule in 1991.

Iran has said it was preparing to file a lawsuit against Saddam for invading Iran.

Asked about $1 billion in war damages demanded by Iran for the 1980-88 war, al-Duleimi said, “We have come to our brothers in Iran and have demanded help.”

He didn’t elaborate, but other Iraqi officials have reportedly called on Iran to waive the demand.

Warming relations result of new government

The comments from al-Duleimi — a Sunni Muslim, picked for the defense post in part in a bid to bring Iraq’s minority Sunnis behind the new government — were a sharp contrast to those of his predecessor.

Last year, former Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan called Iran his country’s “first enemy,” accusing it of supporting Iraqi insurgents and allowing them to freely cross the border.

Tehran says it is trying to control the border, but at nearly 1,000 miles long, the frontier is hard to police.

On Wednesday, the first day of al-Duleimi’s visit, Shamkhani demanded the Iraqi government push for the removal of American forces on its soil, saying their presence serves Israel’s interest.

“Iran demands that the Iraqi government make a decision on this case,” Shamkhani said.

“The government and people of Iraq should not allow foreign forces to consolidate their control in the area with the aim of providing security for Israel.”

Well, in the grand scheme of things, here in OUR America, and the world as well, this two-month old dam failure up there in Washington County in the corrupt State of New York is probably quite small potatoes, but nonetheless, it is a real NEW YORK story, kind of a modern "Damon Runyon Presents" kind of story, and so I include it, for whatever it is worth to the candid world, which may not be much at all, but as for me, a resident of the State of New York, and a licensed professional engineer in that state who has been blacklisted by the state for blowing the whistle too many times on this same DEC that is involved with this dam, well, as for me, I have to wonder ....

And one of the things I wonder at is why the state had an engineering firm from outside of New York State handling the engineering on this project!

For an engineering firm from outside of New York State to do engineering work inside of New York State, where engineers involved in projects such as this must be licensed by the State of New York itself, the New York Department of Education would have had to been involved, to give this New Hampshire engineering company a waiver to practice in New York State, and how that all happened is something that I personally would like to see investigated in connection with this matter, but likely won't, because a major hush-up will be put in place on this fiasco, in all likelihood, and that will be that!

The reason that engineers licensed in the state are supposed to be involved in projects like this is a presumption that local licensed professional engineers are more likely to be familiar with the place that they are from, than are engineers from two states over, who cannot be expected to be familiar with conditions in upstate New York, where this dam break occurred, two months after a new dam was ordered installed by the State of New York, itself, with taxpayer funds being expended on the project, which would necessitate input from New York State licensed professional engineers on all phases of this project, so as to protect and safeguard life, health and property in the State of New York!

"Aftermath of torrent remains grim - Gov. Pataki tours site of dam break as questions about the cause continue"

By DENNIS YUSKO, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Thursday, July 7, 2005

FORT ANN -- Four days after flood waters from Hadlock Pond burst through a dam and deluged homes, bridges and roads, authorities continued to assess the devastation Wednesday and tried to relieve a growing feeling of isolation among residents.

Flying in by helicopter, Gov. George Pataki inspected the havoc from Saturday's dam break before landing at the state emergency command center located at a local church, where he discussed the flooding's impact with state and local officials.

Neither the governor nor local officials could say why the 220-acre man-made pond suddenly smashed through a large section of the dam, which was rebuilt about two months ago.

The governor did not address a report that quoted a local official and the state Department of Environmental Conservation that the dam had been built on a fault line or a geologically sensitive spot.

After his tour by air, Pataki met privately with state and county leaders before viewing pictures of flooded homes.

He credited local emergency crews for preventing injuries and death related to the accident.

"Is there anything you need that you haven't got?" Pataki asked William Cook, Washington County's director of public safety.

"We're in pretty good shape," Cook replied.

But residents and firefighters who witnessed hundreds of millions of gallons of water surge onto the shoreline told a different story.

The walls of water ripped homes from their foundations and forced the evacuation of dozens of residents.

Several homeowners still cannot return to their homes, firefighters said.

The dam breach caused power outages for hundreds and fractured a large water main.

While electricity has returned for many, nearly 300 homes and businesses in the village of Fort Ann still cannot use tap water, said Dave Gould, chief of the West Fort Ann Volunteer Fire Department.

Large segments of Route 149 have been damaged and shut to most traffic, causing workers to detour about 125,000 vehicles a day, Gould said.

About six businesses along the road, including a diner, an ice cream parlor and a truck stop, just reopened, but are severely affected by the lack of traffic.

The torrent wiped out four bridges, re-routed streams and swept away topsoil, boats, fish and anything else that was in the large pond, said Mitch Beck, the fire department's assistant chief.

"It's pure devastation."

"People have lost everything that's near and dear to them."

"It's so unfair," said Kate Whittaker, of Buttermilk Falls Road, located less than a mile from the dam.

She and her husband, John Whittaker, have set up a fund for donations for families directly affected by Saturday's events.

Money is needed for the cleanup because a lot of homeowners didn't have flood insurance, John Whittaker said.

Whittaker, a member of the fire department, said there's "a lot of speculation and hearsay" about the cause of the dam failure.

The state oversaw the rebuilding of the roughly $1.5 million dam.

"It was kind of coincidence, a brand new dam and it kind of breaks loose when the old dam was doing fine," he said.

Surrounding residents used Hadlock Pond, which is big enough to resemble a lake, for recreation.

It is now largely dried out and cratered.

The State Emergency Management Office is coordinating state agencies and performing preliminary damage assessments at the site.

Dispatched so far are personnel from the State Police, state Department of Health, state Department of Environmental Conservation and the state Office of Fire Prevention and Control.

The state also set up two 5,500-gallon water tanks at the Fort Ann school while a boil-water order remains in effect for village residents.

Like all villagers, Eva Mattison, the president of the Fort Ann Board of Education, gets her water from the school while she waits for service to return to her home.

Pataki declared a state of emergency for the area Sunday, opening the way for federal aid.

Federal Highway Administration officials inspected Route 149 on Tuesday and estimated the damage to the road and culverts to be at $1.5 million, said Tom Madison, acting commissioner of the state Department of Transportation.

The federal government could reimburse the state for 80 percent of the $1.5 million if the damage is deemed a man-made disaster by the federal agency, Madison said.

The total monetary cost from the dam break is still being tallied.

"We're going to help them get back on their feet," Pataki said at a press conference, though he did not commit any new state funds to reviving the area Wednesday.

Cook said he wasn't expecting Pataki to bring money.

"My immediate concern and need is to get the roads open, and get life back to normal."

"These people have been through a terrible tragedy," Cook said.

And speaking of flooding, the "modern City model" and 19th century sanitation, all in one sentence .......

"After flooding, sewer upgrade suggested - Schenectady council urges veto of bill on diesel trucks near homes"

By MIKE GOODWIN, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Wednesday, July 6, 2005

SCHENECTADY -- The commissioner of general services acknowledged the city's antiquated sewer system couldn't keep up with Friday's deluge, telling members of the City Council that a multimillion-dollar reconstruction of the system might be in order.

Commissioner Carl Olsen detailed streets that flooded -- including Broadway and Nott, Unadilla, East Front and Lower Crane streets -- to the council's public safety committee.

Olsen could offer no estimate for how much a large overhaul of the sewer system would cost other than to say millions of dollars.

He suggested the city consider a 15- to 20-year reconstruction plan that would allow the city to spread out the payments.

"It's going to cost an ungodly amount of money to address these issues," Olsen told council members.

Friday's storm dropped more than 4 inches of rain on the city in less than three hours.

Runoff quickly overwhelmed the sewer system, sending storm water pouring into the sanitary sewers.

In addition to street flooding that left some homes inundated with water, the added water in the sanitary sewer system overwhelmed the wastewater treatment plant and caused some water to spill into the Mohawk River.

Meanwhile, the City Council urged Mayor Brian U. Stratton to veto flawed legislation that was passed last week by lawmakers and seems to forbid diesel trucks from being kept outside city homes.

The vaguely worded legislation will be reconsidered before next week's council meeting.

Lawmakers had intended to prevent tractor-trailers from idling in driveways, a matter they took up at the urging of council member Denise Brucker.

But several tractor-trailer operators said the city doesn't need to pass legislation outlawing the parking of semi-truck cabs outside homes, noting that federal law forbids them idling for more than 10 minutes.

Here in our fair city of Los Angeles, in Kah-lee FAWN-yah, we have the Hyperion Waste Treatment Facility, located in El Segundo, right by the Pacific Ocean. They process a whole lot of you-know-what in that place. The population of greater LA must be about 4 million.

Hyperion separates out all the particulates, the toxic and non toxic. Some solids are recycled, some are buried in special land fills.

The water released into the ocean is good enough to drink. I've been thinking of bottling it under the label, "Eau Contraire."

Not to knock my up-state New York "breathren", jeffmoskin, but I think a big difference between California and New York is with respect to the people who populate both places, and their level of industriousness and intelligence, and maybe of more importance, what they will tolerate from what are alleged to be "leaders" in the packs and swarms of incompetents that are put up for election, at least back here, on a yearly basis.

For there to be a city the size of Los Angeles, there must be planning, and that is something that LA has going back to the early-1900's, at the minimum, because believe it or not, one of the United States Supreme Court cases that caused me a lot of the problems that I had to face as a public health engineer back here in the corrupt County of Rensselaer in the corrupt State of New York came from Los Angeles, and it was not accepted as "law of the land" back here because it was deemed to have been the work of liberals, and no liberal law was going to come into Rensselaer County, by God, and so it didn't, and so, sanitation-wise, we are back somewhere in the 1700's or 1800's, and people don't seem to mind it all that much, and so it stays that way!

So, in many ways, jeffmoskin, you might truthfully say that LA is an experiment in alternative ideas as to how human beings could live if they weren't ignorant as old rotted tree stumps, and governed by corrupt fools, as a result.

How many brand-new two-month old dams designed and overseen by the "state" have you had fail out there for no apparent reason, lately?

"Flood victims cope on holiday - Officials still trying to assess extent of damage from dam break and determine its cause"

By JORDAN CARLEO-EVANGELIST, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Tuesday, July 5, 2005

FORT ANN -- For a woman who'd spent most of the last 48 hours unsure whether her summer home near Hadlock Pond had been smashed to pieces, to say Lisa Oriol was relieved to be able to fire up her grill with her family on the Fourth of July is an understatement.

The deluge unleashed when the brand-new Hadlock Pond dam crumbled Saturday surged toward her one-story home a quarter-mile southwest of what was Hadlock Pond, leaving a menacing, silty footprint just feet from Oriol's back door.

"The worst part was not knowing," said Oriol, who returned to her Hadlock Pond Road home late Sunday after spending a night in an American Red Cross Shelter with her family.

"I'm thanking God."

Others in the neighborhoods just south of the failed dam did not fair as well.

Some were still unable to return to their homes late Monday, even though power had been restored to most of the area, with some exceptions, officials said.

A boil-water advisory remained in effect for the village of Fort Ann.

Town and state engineers also continued to investigate what caused the concrete and earth dam, which had just been completed in May, to give way and dump most of the 220-acre man-made lake on unsuspecting downstream residents.

Answers remained elusive.

Meanwhile, officials tried to grapple with the true scope of the damage.

In addition to the four homes confirmed destroyed by water and fire, nearly a dozen others sustained moderate to severe damage, said Town Attorney John Aspland Jr.

Others were unlivable because power, water or other utilities were severed by the water and mud.

It still wasn't clear late Monday exactly how many people had been affected by the disaster.

Only seven people stayed in the Red Cross' North Queensbury shelter Sunday night, down from 15 the night before.

By Monday evening, none had requested shelter, said Eileen Reardon, executive director of the Adirondack Saratoga Chapter.

Aspland said the town was having trouble contacting the owners of three of the destroyed homes because they, like about half of the homes around the lake, are not year-round residences.

He said many of the victims who are local are staying with family and friends.

Hadlock Pond Road and Copeland Pond Road were reopened, as were parts of Route 149.

But areas near the three destroyed sections of Route 149 remained closed, he said.

Both the Red Cross and Washington County are offering services today at the Fort Ann Rescue Squad for anyone affected by the flood.

Tankers with drinking water are stationed at the West Fort Ann United Methodist Church at Copeland Pond Road and Route 149 and at the Fort Ann Super Stop on Route 149, Aspland said.

"I am going to be grilling," said Oriol, who made a special point to thank the Red Cross and other volunteers for their generosity.

"They just embraced us, and they were so loving and kind."

"Iraq to World: Keep Diplomats in Baghdad"

By MARIAM FAM, Associated Press Writer

23 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq urged the world's nations Friday to refuse to be "subjected to blackmail" and keep their diplomatic missions in the country despite a claim by an al-Qaida wing that it killed Egypt's top envoy last weekend.

Al-Qaida in Iraq claimed in a Web posting that it had killed the Egyptian diplomat, Ihab al-Sherif, and warned it would go after "as many ambassadors as we can" to punish countries that support Iraq's U.S.-backed leadership.

Saad Mohammed Ridha, the head of Iraq's diplomatic mission in Cairo, told The Associated Press that Egypt's foreign ministry informed him late Thursday that the mission would close temporarily and the staff was recalled.

An Egyptian official in Cairo also said Egypt would temporarily close its mission in Iraq and has recalled its staff — although there was no sign Friday that any of the Egyptians were leaving.

Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kubba said he hadn't been informed that Egypt intended to recall its diplomats, but urged other countries not to be intimidated.

"If the rest of the diplomatic missions from Europe and the neighboring countries give in, this means that all the capitals of the world will be subjected to blackmail," Kubba said Friday.

The announcement from Iraq's most feared terror group appeared on an al-Qaida-linked Web site and featured a brief video showing al-Sherif, wearing a polo shirt.

The video did not show his death, but the statement promised more details later.

Al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, normally releases videos of its victims' deaths.

The Iraqi foreign ministry offered condolences for the "assassination" and an Egyptian diplomat who spoke to Egyptian reporters in Cairo said the government was sure al-Sherif was dead "from our own means."

He spoke on condition of anonymity and did not elaborate.

News of the killing marked a dramatic escalation in a campaign to discourage Arab and Muslim governments from sending ambassadors and strengthening ties with Iraq, as Washington wants.

Last month, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari announced that Egypt would be the first Arab country to upgrade its diplomatic representation by appointing a full-fledged ambassador.

In Cairo, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak insisted his country will continue to support Iraq.

"This terrorist act will not deter Egypt from its firm position in support of Iraq and its people," the statement said.

Al-Sherif "lost his life at the hands of terrorism that trades in Islam but knows no nation and no religion."

Al-Sherif, 51, was seized Saturday in Baghdad.

Three days later, gunmen fired on senior envoys from Pakistan and Bahrain, two Muslim nations with close ties to the United States, in apparent kidnap attempts.

In its latest statement, al-Qaida said it did not announce al-Sherif's kidnapping until after the subsequent attacks "to be able to capture as many ambassadors as we can."

Iraqi officials, meanwhile, sought to assure foreign governments that their diplomats would be safe.

Officials said al-Sherif, a former deputy ambassador to Israel, was grabbed in a dangerous neighborhood while traveling without armed escorts.

Egypt's U.N. ambassador asked the U.N. Security Council on Thursday to urgently address the issue of protecting diplomats in Iraq.

Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz said the council should address the issue "in a manner which would secure the lives of those diplomats, not only of Egypt but of other countries who have been subject to such brutal attacks in the past few days."

And from chaos in Iraq to chaos in the heavens, or the earth's atmosphere, any way!

Tropical Storm Cindy is headed north, and is supposed to be getting here in a few hours, and so, the flood watch is back in place, once again, which a lot of times is just like Chicken Little, or Jeb Bush, maybe crying out that the sky is falling!

Once these northward moving storms come up the Ohio valley and get into the mountains of northern Pennsylvania, it can be anybody's guess what they will do, or where they will go, and so it is with Cindy!

Right where I am, there can be well over a foot of difference in snow falls from the same storm in a twenty-mile radius, and so too with these heavy rain storms, as well, where four or more inches can fall in one place, and just down the road, not an inch will fall, and so ......

We shall see ....

"Dennis Strengthens, Kills Five in Haiti"

By STEVENSON JACOBS, Associated Press Writer

30 minutes ago

MORANT BAY, Jamaica - Hurricane Dennis swept away a bridge and peeled tin roofs off homes in Haiti, killing at least five people as it strengthened to a Category 4 storm and headed straight for Cuba.

Forecasters said it could reach the U.S. Gulf Coast by Sunday.

The Hurricane Center in Miami said the eye was swirling over water about 230 miles southeast of Havana, Cuba, and about 285 miles southeast of Key West, Fla.

It was moving to the northwest at about 12 miles an hour.

The hurricane's winds neared 135 mph as it sideswiped Jamaica on Thursday.

Forecasters predicted the storm could hit the United States anywhere from Florida to Louisiana by Sunday or Monday, raising fears that oil production in the Gulf of Mexico would be disrupted by the fourth storm in as many weeks.

Thunderstorms swept over the Dominican Republic, southern Haiti and northeast Jamaica.

The Cayman Islands, Cuba and the lower Florida Keys were under hurricane warnings, including the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay holding some 520 terror suspects.

Hurricane Center forecasters warned the Sierra Maestra Mountains in southeastern Cuba could get 15 inches of rain, while Jamaica's coffee-producing Blue Mountains could see 10 inches.

Hurricane force winds reached 50 miles from eye and tropical storm force winds another 140 miles.

In the southwestern Haitian town of Grand Goave, an Associated Press Television News reporter saw at least four people killed when a wood and metal bridge collapsed.

Witnesses said the river came suddenly rushing over the bridge.

Elsewhere on the dangerously deforested island, wind gusts uprooted a palm tree and sent it into a mud hut, killing a fifth person in the southern town of Les Cayes, the Red Cross said.

Many homes and roads in the south were flooded, some by as much as three feet of water.

The Florida Keys were under a hurricane warning Thursday and ordered tourists to evacuate, and the southern Florida peninsula was on tropical storm watch, expecting severe conditions within 36 hours.

In Jamaica, Prime Minister Percival Patterson urged people in low-lying areas to evacuate.

"Let us all work together in unity so that we will be spared the worst," Patterson said in a national radio broadcast.

Despite his appeal, only about 1,000 people were in shelters late afternoon.

The hurricane center warned the eye could pass over central Cuba sometime Friday afternoon.

In the communist-run island, where the military-style government has been praised by the United Nations for its extensive hurricane preparedness plans, more than 100,000 people had been evacuated in the island's southeast, civil defense officials said on state television.

There were no immediate plans to evacuate detainees or troops from the U.S. detention center's Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, located on Cuba's extreme southeast end about 150 yards from the ocean, Gen. Jay Hood said.

Troops put heavy steel shutters on sea-facing cell windows as heavy surf sent splashes of salt spray over the razor wire fence.

Officials said Camp Delta was built to withstand winds up to 90 mph.

Oil prices rose sharply Wednesday on concerns about the Caribbean weather, but closed down 55 cents Thursday, at $60.73 a barrel, as terrorist blasts in London led investors to abandon riskier investments.

Dennis came right behind Tropical Storm Cindy, which made landfall late Tuesday in Louisiana and hindered oil production and refining.

On Thursday, remnants of Cindy dumped heavy rain on parts of the Carolinas, prompting flash flood and tornado watches.

The hurricane center's lead forecaster, Martin Nelson, said it was the first time the Atlantic hurricane season had four named storms this early since record-keeping began in 1851.

The season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

Last year, three catastrophic hurricanes — Frances, Ivan and Jeanne — tore through the Caribbean with a collective ferocity not seen in years, causing hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in damage.

end quotes

But fear not, folks, for this kind of news is probably false!

It is in all likelihood something cooked up by "enviro-mentalist TAY-RISTS" for no other purpose than to politically embarass George W. Bush, and his brother Jebbie, and George Pataki, of course, and the Republican Party, as well, because the "enviro-mentalists" want us all to have to live in caves ......

There is no "environmental re-energization" going on as a result of the activities of mankind, well, because we're just too puny to do anything like that, and so, the hurricane business is just an invention of the "enviro-mentalists"!

So, if you think the wind is tearing your house apart, or if you think your house is under flood waters, other than those caused by incompetence and negligence on the part of the State of New York, and its "P.(olitical) E.(ngineer)'s", well, take comfort in the words of George W. Bush and the Republican Party LAWYERS that it just is a figment of your imagination whipped up by these "enviro-mentalists" to embarass George W. Bush!

"Dennis touches Cuba, hits Guantanamo base"

By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press
Last updated: 5:16 p.m., Friday, July 8, 2005

HAVANA -- Hurricane Dennis stalked Cuba's southern coast before cutting across the Caribbean's largest island, packing 145 mph winds capable of catastrophic damage that sent thousands fleeing the Florida Keys and raised fears of more disruption to U.S. oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

Winds and heaving surf tossed a guard tower into the sea and roared over a razor-wire fence at the U.S. detention camp for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, on the island's eastern end.

Forecasters predicted the storm will intensify and hit the United States anywhere from Florida to Louisiana by Sunday or Monday, the fourth storm in as many weeks to disrupt oil production.

An evacuation order was in effect in the Florida Keys, where officials feared Dennis would skirt or hit the island chain on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Tornadoes could develop there, the U.S. Hurricane Center said Friday afternoon.

A Category 4 storm with winds that grew to 150 mph Friday before weakening slightly to 145 mph, Dennis killed five people in Haiti.

It stranded tens of thousands there and in Jamaica, collapsing bridges, triggering landslides, inundating homes and blocking roads with downed power lines and trees.

The eye made landfall on central Cuba's southern coast a second time shortly before 2 p.m. Friday near Cienfuegos, Cuba, about 125 miles southeast of Havana, the Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Overnight, Dennis crossed a sparsely populated Cuban cape at Cabo Cruz jutting out far west.

More than 600,000 people left their homes to stay at government shelters or with family and friends, Cuban civil defense officials said.

Hurricane-force winds extended 50 miles, with tropical storm force winds stretching another 160 miles.

Dennis was moving northwest at nearly 17 mph.

The first hurricane of the season sideswiped Haiti's southwestern peninsula and Jamaica's south and east coasts Thursday and dumped rain on the Dominican Republic.

In Jamaica, a rescue helicopter was to airlift food and emergency supplies to hundreds of stranded islanders in at least seven eastern towns cut off by knee-deep floodwaters, said Nadene Newsome, spokeswoman for the country's emergency management office.

"Flooding has affected every parish of the island and it will increase as long as the rain continues throughout the day" Friday, she said.

The Florida Keys were under a hurricane warning and the rest of the peninsula on tropical storm watch.

On Friday, the Cayman Islands downgraded its hurricane warning to a tropical storm watch, spared a direct hit by the storm's overnight turn to the west.

Also spared overnight was the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba's extreme southeast end, holding about 520 terror suspects.

Heaving surf tore away a lifeguard tower at Windmill Beach and storm force winds reaching 40 mph, destroyed a bus shelter.

Power lines and tree branches were knocked down and there was minor flooding.

"Actually, everybody fared real well," Navy Cmdr. Anne Reese said.

On Thursday, troops watched from a cliff as the churning Atlantic Ocean threw up massive waves of salt spray that towered over the razor wire fence surrounding the camp.

Troops fixed metal shutters over the steel mesh windows of some prison cells overlooking the sea at Camp Delta, just 150 yards from the ocean.

Hurricane Center forecasters warned Cuba's southeast Sierra Maestra Mountains could get up to 15 inches of rain, with about 10 inches falling on Jamaica's coffee-producing Blue Mountains.

In Haiti, an Associated Press Television Reporter saw at least four people die when a bridge collapsed in the town of Grand Goave, and a government statement said it was feared the toll could go higher.

Elsewhere on the island, wind gusts uprooted a palm tree and flung it into a mud hut, killing a fifth person in the southern town of Les Cayes, the Red Cross said.

Floodwaters rose to waist level in an abandoned church in Les Cayes and nearly reached a table where 63-year-old Eloge Larame lay ill.

His family of five stood on chairs, their feet submerged in the water.

Wind gusts ripped tin roofs from homes and whipped sheets of rain that flooded roads.

In Cuba's southern city of Cienfuegos, residents rushed Friday to board up windows with plywood, metal sheeting -- even cardboard.

"Every time hurricanes pass through, we suffer because we are at the southernmost point," said Antonio Leonardo.

"With a hurricane as strong as this one, there's a lot of fear of losing one's home."

Residents fled the city on bicycle and on foot, some carrying pet dogs.

Long lines formed at gas stations and at government ration centers distributing bread.

Cuba evacuated more than 100,000 people from the southeast on Thursday, civil defense officials said.

Hundreds of tourists were taken to hotels in Havana and northern Varadero beach resort.

Thousands of students at government boarding schools were sent home, and livestock moved to higher ground.

The largest and most populous Caribbean island with 11.2 million people, Cuba suffers few hurricane casualties because the government evacuates people en masse, sometimes forcefully.

Dennis came right behind Tropical Storm Cindy, which made landfall late Tuesday in Louisiana and hindered oil production and refining.

------

Associated Press writers Stevenson Jacobs in Morant Bay, Jamaica, Leonardo Aldridge in Les Cayes, Haiti, Ben Fox at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, and Vanessa Arrington in Cienfuegos, Cuba, contributed to this report.

Well, it's kind of "sodden" up here where I am, but outside of that, it's actually not been too bad at all, for me, anyway, but that is as much of a function of where I am, as anything, or so my experience over the last fifty years or so tells me, since I have been on this same spot of land since 1949, and some pretty fierce weather has come through the area in that time, including the eye of a hurricane, back in the early-1950's!

Because of the topography, which affects wind patterns, and hence, weather patterns, there seems to be a "circulation" set up when these tropical air masses come north that puts a kind of "eye" above me, and so, I am protected, which is one reason that I stay right where I am, especially in these changing times, where places to the south of me now get worse winter weather than I do, more of the time!

The whole climate and ecology where I am has been altered in these last twenty years or so, and now, it is changing, and not to our betterment, and that is my opinion on the matter as a trained and licensed environmental engineer/public health engineer!

Los Angeles, out where jeffmoskin writes in from, might be able to stand a population up into the millions, but not up here in the north-east where I am, for a host of sound reasons, such as the climate and the temperature extremes, and the terrain, and the soil, and the surface water ......

But we are now "faith-based" up here, too, with respect to our "science", and our "engineering", and so, we simply disregard so much of reality as would disagree with an evangelical/fundamentalist view that the earth was created in seven days, and in perfection to boot, which means that every acre of land a developer has in his possession can and will be subdivided into four smaller lots, and no questions need to be asked by the engineers, because, of course, God wants it this way, or he would not have given us zoning schedules for our swampland up here that allows for four houses to the acre!

And we engineers are supposed to support the thesis that man is the master of the earth, and so, we are to have faith in those who will do the transforming of the earth, that because they own the bulldozers, that God and Jesus are firmly on their side, and so, all that they do for God's children who will buy subdivision lots from them is good as well.

And with all of that said, and then done, well, of course, there is no need of engineers up here in George Pataki's EMPIRE of New York, and so, I should look at the bright side, I guess, which is .....

Hhhmmmmm!

Let's see, the bright side ....

No engineers, no engineering reviews, just sell it and let the public be damned ....

Hhhhmmm, look for the bright side .....

Well, there's ....

Hah!

How about I am glad that I live somewhere where I won't have to tread water, or so I hope?

And since we are on the subject of treading water, let's see what is up with Ms. Hillary ......

"Young GOP Eager to Face Hillary Clinton"

By CHRISTINA ALMEIDA, Associated Press Writer

53 minutes ago

LAS VEGAS - Young Republicans have one thing to say to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton about a possible 2008 presidential bid: Bring it on.

Members attending the group's biennial convention said it's not too early to talk about how to keep a Republican in the White House, and they believe Clinton could help them win again if she were on the Democratic ticket.

"I think it's very likely the senator from New York will run," said Rick Veenstra, 27, chairman of the Illinois Young Republicans.

"She'll bring a lot of people to the polls."

The name Clinton before a number of Republicans is akin to waving a red flag."

Convention guests attended several panels and training seminars on Thursday, including one on how to mobilize young voters by "keeping it positive not partisan."

They were told the only demographic President Bush lost to Sen. John Kerry in 2004 was those ages 18 to 29.

"This party cannot afford to allow that segment of the population to be Democrat," said Frank Fahrenkopf, former Republican National Committee chairman and Thursday's keynote speaker.

"This is where the Young Republicans can be of particular value."

Clinton won't even talk about the presidential race, saying she is focused on her 2006 re-election campaign in New York.

But many here said they would welcome Clinton's entrance in the race because she is a polarizing figure.

"It would be absolutely great for us," said Michele Mester, a 26-year-old member of the Greater Cleveland Young Republicans.

"She's like a PR nightmare."

Several of the 600 Young Republicans gathered for the five-day convention mentioned New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Arizona Sen. John McCain as potential presidential contenders.

Others suggested Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee.

Ashanti Gholar, president of Young Democrats of Nevada, said it was too early for all this speculation though.

"2008 is very far away," Gholar said, "especially in politics."
___

On the Net:

http://www.youngrepublicans.com

http://www.yrnc2005.com

"This party cannot afford to allow that segment of the population to be Democrat," said Frank Fahrenkopf, former Republican National Committee chairman and Thursday's keynote speaker?

I wonder why not?

"Taliban vows to kill 'captured' American in days - Spokesman gives no proof SEAL is held hostage; U.S. search persists"

Updated: 6:56 a.m. ET July 8, 2005

KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S. military searched for an eleventh day on Friday for a U.S. commando missing in eastern Afghanistan, while the Taliban said their guerrillas were interrogating the man and would kill him within days.

The U.S. military has said it has no information to suggest the Navy SEAL commando, part of a four-man team that went missing during a clash with militants in mountainous Kunar province on June 28, has been captured.

And Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi has given no evidence to back his claim that the guerrillas are holding him.

Speaking to Reuters from an undisclosed location on Friday, Hakimi said he was unable to provide the name or a description of the commando because of difficulties contacting guerrillas holding him.

However, he insisted: “The soldier is with us."

"He is alive, but we will kill him in the coming couple of days."

"We are interrogating him and that is why we have kept him alive."

"The interrogation is about American military tactics and their operations.”

He repeated that a video of the man would be provided to media organizations.

He said the Taliban Web site -- http://www.alemarah.com -- on which the guerrillas intended to post pictures of the commando, had been blocked by the Americans.

U.S. military spokeswoman Lieutenant Cindy Moore said troops were searching for the missing commando.

She said she did not know how long it would continue.

2 SEALS 'killed in action'

The U.S. military has said two members of the missing commando team were found dead on Monday, and had been “killed in action”, while another had been rescued.

A U.S. helicopter sent to aid the team was shot down the same day they went missing, killing all 16 troops aboard, the heaviest losses for U.S. forces in a single combat operation since they overthrew the Taliban in late 2001.

If what Hakimi is saying is true, it would be a major embarrassment for the United States, which is already suffering its bloodiest year in Afghanistan since invading in 2001.

The Taliban has never before captured, or claimed to have captured, a U.S. soldier.

Navy SEALs are trained to operate behind enemy lines and the rescued commando evaded militants for five days.

The military says the search, involving more than 300 U.S. troops backed by aircraft and Afghan forces, has been hampered by rugged, wooded terrain and cloudy weather.

"Iraq links London attacks to insurgency"

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press
Last updated: 11:06 a.m., Friday, July 8, 2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Islamic extremists have been using Iraq as a planning center for attacks around the world since losing Afghanistan as their base in 2001, the government's chief spokesman said Friday.

Speaking about Thursday's blasts in London that killed more than 50 people, Laith Kubba said "we don't know exactly who carried out these acts but it is clear that these networks used to be in Afghanistan and now they work in Iraq."

The spokesman said that insurgents in Iraq and those who carried out the London attacks "are from the same network."

"There are different groups in the world, but they all follow the same school."

Kubba was referring to hardline Muslim extremists who label people that don't agree with them as infidels.

"We don't know exactly who enters Iraq then leaves to carry out attacks with explosives around the world," he told The Associated Press.

Iraq's government has accused Syria of allowing insurgents to cross its porous border into Iraq -- a claim Damascus denies, saying it cannot fully control its portion of the frontier.

Meanwhile, President Jalal Talabani condemned the London attacks because "these vile crimes reflect the moral bankruptcy of those who conducted them in the name of humanity."

"Terrorism has become an international plague that does not discriminate between races, people or religions," Talabani said in a letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Insurgent attacks in Iraq have killed thousands since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003.

Britain has been the United States' closest ally in Iraq and has hundreds of troops in southern regions.

And this following has come to me from the Veteran's Hotline out there, and reading it over, I thought that it should be posted in here, for whatever it is worth, and so ....

BALITANG BETERANO

By Col. (Ret.US) Frank B. Quesada, Former Senate Committee Secretary, Veterans and Military Pensions, Associate, PMA ‘44

SERIOUS UNDERESTIMATE OF U.S TROOP DEATHS IN IRAQ

Latest Count From Hospitals

Reliable report from the "Op"

Iraqi Freedom Deaths," (June 22, 2005, PST) 1st edition, stated as follows:

(A) In-country deaths = 1,731.

(B) Deaths occurring after medic-evacuation from Iraq = 7,292.

©Total deaths (OIF) =9,023

(D) Wounded = 26,419.

Military News Sources

According to Willie Otis, of the Military News and Information Center, American War Library, established in 1988:

"The news we are hearing is not the same news made here."

"However, we all understand that the news media‘s obsession for missing kids and movie stars are more important than we are."

Report of Baltimore Independent Media

The same news was confirmed by the Baltimore Independent Media Center stating that nearly 9,000 U.S troops are dead.

It called for an independent call for information.

These figures add up which appears credible based of factual count.

Pres. Bush’s Speech

Pres. Bush’s speech (July 3/2005[Tuesday]) and the headline would be George W. Bush says that the sacrifice of more than "1,700 American lives to the invasion of Iraq" was "worth it." (Please note the number he quoted as 1,700 American lives.)

He either does not get the correct figure, or has been kept out of the truth by his own men.

Grieving mothers and families of those who came back in body bags know more than 1,700 were KIAs.

John Brummett in his column in Las Vegas Review Journal, has this to say: "The best president could do under the circumstances was down play his style, repeat his falsehoods and belabor his the obvious, as if were wise and tough."

David Broder columnist for the Washington Post, wrote to wit: "Congress, the administration. servicemen and their famiies, and the general public could judge what is happening."

Questions Are Raised

Has the Bush Administration drastically under-estimated the U.S. military death count by redefining "death?"

In Congress, Rep. Buyer was reported to be making a new definition of the word "veteran."

American taxpayers are beginning to see through all these postures.

According to the article, "the Dept.of Defense (DoD) lists currently being very quietly circulated indicate almost 9,000 (U.S. military) deaths exceeded the 'official death' count of 13,831."

How can this be?

It is largely because the U.S Military Personnel in German hospitals have not been previously counted?

Hospital Death Record

"On January 1, 2005 there already 6,200 deaths in German hospitals reported."

According to Brian Harring, "There is excellent reason to believe the DoD is deliberately not reporting the dead in Iraq."

"I have received copies of the evacuation manifest from the Military Air Transports (MATS) that showed far more bodies shipped than are reported officially."

"And the educated rumor is that actual death toll is in excess of 7,000."

Deserters and Escapees

"Given the acknowledged number of those seriously wounded, this elevated death toll, at least, 5,500 American military personnel, most in Ireland but more escaped to Canada and to other Euro-countries, none of whom are inclined to complain about Iraq War with vengeful American authorities." (See: TBR News, 18 Feb.2005, for full coverage on mass desertions.)

Killed and Wounded

Also not publicly reported some 160,000 U.S. military personnel shipped out to Iraq, 26,000 either deserted, were killed or over 16,000 seriously wounded currently very quietly circulated.

And almost 9,000 dead counted.

Suicides, Forced Hospitalization

"There were reported out of the 24,000 a large number of suicides, forced hospitalization for going on drug usage, murder of Iraq civilians and fellow soldiers, rapes, and court martials."

Casualty List

Harring said, "I have a copy of the DoD casualty list, and I am alphabeting it with the reported dates of death – intending for their loves ones, and for them to inform their respective congressmen, their local newspapers, and us, as their concerned ally as soon as possible."

Harring adds, "The government gets away with it, with this huge lies because they falsely claim, that only soldiers actually killed in Iraq are actually reported."

So irresponsible and nauseating.

Strict Concealment

You ought to realize that that Pres. Bush personally ordered that no pictures, coffined and flag-draped dead under any circumstances.

He claims that this is to comfort the bereaved relatives designed.

Albeit, to keep the huge number of arriving bodies secret.

"Any civilian or military personnel, taking pictures will be prosecuted immediately."

If the Bush administration could not be transparent with its citizen-taxpayers – therefore, does not deserve the trust and confidence of the American people.

His party is surely in for a big surprise in the next election."

Least does the GOP realize that its policy of abuse, fuels the people to hate the abuser?

The more it is concealed –like garbage, the more it will stink later.

What is putrid – is as filthy as lies.

The latest information on the wounded: "Landstuhl Regional Hospital Center in Germany, is a 150 bed hospital where there were 24,000 wounded military patients from Iraq since the start of Iraq War."

Pentagon’s Secrecy

It was said, Pentagon refused to publish the accurate list of any wounded,

Why Lie to the American taxpayers?

The question before the American people is – why are there such falsehoods and untruths?

Doubt is the consequence of unfaithlessness.

If these reports are authentic and true what is the reason for concealment?

People do not hide the truth. - only lies.

So - what is the Bush administration afraid of?

"La cosa marso" - if making progress, what is there to conceal?

Why the "oily" alibi?

end quotes

This information is not verified, which is why this post is circulating around the Veteran's Hotline out there in OUR America.

Veterans, or some anyway, do not like being lied to by what we believe is OUR government, and combat veterans just have this ability to see through lies, because our lives depended on exactly that, and once there, you are not susceptible to going backwards, as seems to be a requirement in this present version of America that George W. Bush and his REPUBLICANS are serving us on a spoon, these days, where lies are the only truth there is anymore!

The request made of me was to read it, consider what is contained therein, and to then post it for information, or discussion, as I thought appropriate, and so ....

I have just picked myself up from the floor. Seriously, Livyjr, I am too too old to be subjected to this kind of humor. My bones are too brittle. I don't take falls well.

When you look up "Urban Sprawl" in the dictionary, there is a picture of Los Angeles.

Planning.

I don't think so.

We lucked out because, as the city expanded, they kept building sewers, dumping raw sewage into the ocean of course. But all the lines liked up to the El Segundo pipeline, near Hyperion, so it was ultimately possible to build a waste treatment facility there.

Which they did.

Well, jeffmoskin, you have just put the whole field, or concept, of "city planning" back into its proper context, which is that it is likely a farce, all too much of the time, a great big bill of goods that people suck up like pablum, and then they go back home, or never leave there in the first place, to see what impacts might going to befall them, from the next "best thing for the community" that some intinerant drummer or land developer from somewhere else has just brought to your town for consideration!

"Well, it's true I'm not from here, and it's also true that I don't know nothing about here, but my project, well, it is just the best kind of thing, and since I only build upscale, well, I only deal with the better sort, you know ...."

Ah, well, no, I don't really know!

Why don't you edify me?

And believe it or not, we are taught about Los Angeles as an example of city planning, back here, by all these experts!

Just goes to show you ....

"Taliban claims to kill ‘captured’ American - Groups offers no proof SEAL is held hostage; U.S. search persists"

Updated: 4:51 a.m. ET July 9, 2005

KABUL, Afghanistan - Taliban guerrillas said on Saturday they had killed a missing American commando they claimed to have captured in eastern Afghanistan last month.

The U.S. military said it had no information to support the claim.

“We killed him at 11 o’clock today; we killed him using a knife and chopped off his head,” Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said from an undisclosed location.

He said that the body had been dumped on a mountain in the eastern province of Kunar.

The U.S. military has said it has no information to suggest the Navy SEAL commando, part of a four-man team that went missing during a clash with militants in mountainous Kunar on June 28, has been captured.

Asked about the Taliban claim that the man had been killed, U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jerry O’Hara said he had no information to support it, but the military was looking into the report.

“We are still conducting a search hoping our missing service member is alive as we have no proof telling us otherwise,” he said.

The U.S. military has said two of the missing commandos were found dead on Monday, having been “killed in action”, while another had been rescued and one was missing.

A U.S. helicopter sent to aid the team was shot down the same day the team went missing during a battle with insurgents, killing all 16 troops aboard, the heaviest losses for U.S. forces in a single combat operation since they overthrew the Taliban in late 2001.

Unreliable messenger

Hakimi’s information has often proven unreliable in the past, but he has appeared well informed about events surrounding the helicopter crash.

He said the body of the commando had been left on the top of a mountain in Kunar province’s Shegal district.

“He is wearing red clothes,” he said.

“We got the information we wanted from him during the interrogation.”

Hakimi had said earlier on Saturday that the man the guerrillas claimed to be holding was a commando officer and would be killed in two or three days following his interrogation.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency also quoted a guerrilla commander in Kunar, Mohammad Ismail, as saying that the commando had been killed.

It quoted Hakimi as saying the killing followed a decision by the Taliban’s council of religious leaders.

Hundreds of U.S. soldiers, backed by Afghan troops and helicopters, have been searching for the missing commando in Kunar for the past 12 days.

Terrain, weather hampers search

Navy SEALs are trained to operate behind enemy lines and the rescued commando evaded militants for five days.

The U.S. military has said the search, involving more than 300 U.S. troops backed by aircraft and Afghan forces, has been hampered by rugged, wooded terrain and cloudy weather.

The Taliban have never before captured, or claimed to have captured, a U.S. soldier.

U.S. President George W. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, declared on Tuesday it was a top priority to find the missing man.

U.S. media have said the loss of eight Navy Seals aboard the helicopter and the two on the ground, were the heaviest ever losses in a combat operation for the 2,400-strong elite force.

And in Iraq, where major combat operations by OUR military are long since over, according to COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF George W. Bush, it looks like we have yet another major combat operation, on-going, but since George W. Bush is likely still focused on how and why he ran that Scottish cop down at Gleneagles, he likely does not know what is going on in Iraq, as if he ever did ....

"U.S. Launches Operation Scimitar in Iraq"

By FRANK GRIFFITHS, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 23 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - About 600 U.S. Marines and Iraqi soldiers have launched a fourth counterinsurgency operation in less than a month in a volatile western province in Iraq, this time near Fallujah, the military said Saturday.

Operation Scimitar started Thursday with targeted raids in the village of Zaidan, 20 miles southeast of Fallujah.

So far, 22 suspected insurgents had been detained.

Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, was a major insurgent bastion until U.S. forces overran the city in November.

The military said it did not announce the offensive earlier because commanders did not want to tip off insurgents that a major operation had begun.

The campaign — named after a curved Asian sword — includes 500 Marines from the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, Regimental Combat Team-8, stationed in Okinawa, Japan, the military said.

About 100 Iraqi soldiers were supporting the operation, which is designed to disrupt insurgent activity in the Anbar province.

The latest counterinsurgency offensive in the province came on the heels of Operations Spear, Dagger and Sword.

There are a number of insurgent strongholds in Anbar, which stretches from Baghdad to the Syrian border.

The heaviest fighting occurred during Operation Spear in mid-June in the town of Karabilah near the porous Syrian border, which intelligence officials believe is the main gateway for foreign fighters entering Iraq.

The military said it killed about 50 insurgents in airstrikes, tank shelling and gunbattles during Operation Spear.

Sections of Karabilah were left in rubble.

Elsewhere Saturday, gunmen using three cars killed police Capt. Saad Mihsin Abdul Sadah in Amiriyah, 25 miles west of Baghdad.

He was on his way to work at the Interior Ministry, police said.

The insurgency has frequently targeted Iraq's security forces, but started focusing on attacking foreign diplomats in recent days as part of a new trend apparently aimed at isolating the country from the Arab world.

A roadside bomb hit an American convoy in the central city of Samarra, damaging one Humvee, police Capt. Laith Mohammed said.

There no immediate reports of casualties.

A separate mortar attack in downtown Samarra wounded three women, he said.

At the G-8 summit in Scotland, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said his government would begin withdrawing about 300 troops from Iraq in September — subject to security conditions at the time.

The moves came as violent incidents in the Iraqi capital are declining since Iraq's U.S.-backed forces launched an operation against insurgents in the city six weeks ago.

The commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. William G. Webster Jr., said car bombings had dropped from 14 to 21 a week in May to about seven or eight a week now.

But he said it was "very difficult to know" whether the insurgency has been broken.

Iraqi officials have become concerned about a possible exodus of diplomats from Baghdad after a Web site claim Thursday by al-Qaida in Iraq that it had killed Egyptian envoy Ihab al-Sherif, who was seized by up to eight gunmen on a street in western Baghdad last weekend.

Egyptian and Iraqi officials said Egypt would temporarily close its mission in Iraq and recall its staff — although al-Sherif's body has not been found and the Web statement contained no photographic evidence of his death.

Pakistan's Ambassador Mohammed Younis Khan left the country Wednesday after his convoy was fired on in a kidnap attempt.

Bahrain's top envoy, Hassan Malallah al-Ansari, was expected to leave soon after he was slightly wounded in a separate attempt.

In its Web statement, the country's most feared terror group said it wanted to seize "as many ambassadors as we can" to punish governments that support Iraq's Shiite-dominated government.

Sunni Arabs, who dominated Iraq until fellow Sunni Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003, boycotted January elections and now make up the core of an insurgency that has killed more than 1,475 people since the Shiite- and Kurdish-led government took office on April 28.

And while George W. Bush and his version of America launch yet another major combat operation against the beleaguered peoples of Iraq, nature is launching a combat operation of its own against America .....

"Million urged to leave U.S. coast ahead of Dennis"

By Frances Kerry

59 minutes ago

MIAMI (Reuters) - Authorities urged more than a million people to evacuate as Hurricane Dennis closed in on low-lying coastal areas of northwestern Florida, Alabama and Mississippi on Saturday after killing at least 32 people in Cuba and Haiti.

The storm was on a northwest track that could take it to landfall on Sunday between Florida's northwestern panhandle and Mississippi -- an area still recovering from a battering by Hurricane Ivan in September.

Early on Saturday Dennis had pounded Cuba, shattering houses, downing power lines and littering streets with debris before brushing past the southern tip of Florida.

Even though southern Florida did not get Dennis' full force, some 140,000 homes and businesses were without power in the state at about noon, state officials said.

Most outages were in the Florida Keys and other parts of southern Florida, including the Miami area, hit by stormy weather from the hurricane's outer bands.

Dennis weakened as it crossed Cuba on Friday from a ferocious 150 mph (240 kph) hurricane to a 90-mph (144-kph) storm but immediately regained some of its lost strength when it hit open water and skirted Key West, the popular tourist island at the end of the Florida Keys chain.

The hurricane was pushing top sustained winds of about 100 mph (160 kph) and forecasters said it could strengthen in the coming hours as it passed over the warm waters of the Gulf.

At 3 p.m. (1900 GMT) the center of Dennis was located about 295 miles south of Apalachicola, Florida, and was moving northwestward at 14 mph (23 kph).

"This is a very dangerous storm," Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said, urging people to heed evacuation orders or advice out to some 700,00 people in the state.

Authorities in Alabama and Mississippi called for more than 500,000 people to leave their homes in vulnerable areas.

CUBA MOPS UP

In Cuba, workers cleared debris, fallen trees, lampposts and electrical lines from streets in urban areas pounded by the storm.

Much of the country of 11 million people was still without power, including Havana, the capital, and Cienfuegos, the city on the south-central coast hardest hit by Dennis.

"It felt as if the world was coming to an end," said Maria Helena, a housewife in Cienfuegos.

"The hurricane sounded like helicopters and planes flying over my home."

Roaring winds with gusts of up to 100 mph (165 kph) and driving rain pounded blacked-out Havana all night.

Authorities cut off power to avoid accidents from fallen cables.

Ten people were killed in Cuba on Thursday night when the storm hit the southeastern corner of the island, most of them in collapsed houses in two coastal towns in Granma province.

Officials said 15,400 of the adjacent towns' 20,000 houses were destroyed or damaged.

Television images showed rows of clapboard houses flattened by the storm.

In southern Haiti, 15 people died when a swollen river tore away a bridge.

The overall death toll in Haiti reached 22, officials said.

Authorities had ordered people out of the lower half of the 100-mile Florida Keys but the island chain appeared to escape the full brunt of the storm.

"We're very fortunate that we didn't get the bulk of the storm," Key West Mayor Jimmy Weekley told Miami's WFOR television.

"We haven't had a lot of damage."

Dennis is a threat to key oil and natural gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico, where a quarter of U.S. production comes from.

Energy companies have pulled hundreds of workers off oil rigs and shut down some crude and natural gas production.

Ivan, which was one of four hurricanes that hit Florida in a six-week period last year, caused extensive damage to Gulf pipelines and rigs.

Dennis could hit on Sunday in the area near the Florida-Alabama border that was hammered by Ivan.

Florida officials said some 40,000 people across the state had homes that still had not been repaired from last year's hurricanes.

"They are hurting," said Bush, referring to residents of the area.

"There is a legitimate feeling 'why me, why us, what did we do wrong?"'

(Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle in Havana, Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince, Cathy Donelson in Mobile, Jennifer Portman in Tallahassee and Jim Loney in Miami)

end quotes

"There is a legitimate feeling 'why me, why us, what did we do wrong?"'

Well, how about this, did you support George W. Bush, and his brother Jeb, when they wanted to destroy other peoples, in other countries, because they are Bush's, and so have God on their side, in their version of things?

Might you people have done that, I wonder?

Did you pray for God to destroy other people?

Did you ever consider that when God gets prayers like that, he of course hears them, and then, to be sure that the person praying is very sincere in what they are asking for, for others, of course, he gives them a dose themselves, just to give them an opportunity to fine-tune their prayer, if necessary?

Just curious .....

"Four Named Storms in July Set Record"

By JOSEPH B. VERRENGIA, AP Science Writer

2 hours, 54 minutes ago

Arlene, Bret, Cindy and now Dennis.

Storm hunters don't expect to be hunched over their radar screens and dispatching chase aircraft until Labor Day.

But 2005 is no normal year.

Martin Nelson, the lead forecaster at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, says this is the first time the Atlantic hurricane season had four named storms this early since record-keeping began in 1851.

The season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

The first three storms never grew beyond tropical storms that dumped rain and cut utilities from Louisiana to the Carolinas.

Dennis got its name on July 5 and two days later it had morphed into a Category 4 monster with winds reaching 150 mph.

It also is the earliest occurrence of a Category 4 hurricane in the Caribbean, and possibly the U.S., meteorologists say.

Having killed 20 people in Haiti and Cuba, now Dennis has set its sights on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Forecasters predict it will regain strength over warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the storm will hit the mainland anywhere from Florida to Louisiana on Sunday.

Researchers have several ideas why this hurricane season is beginning so ferociously, but they say one thing appears likely.

"If you get these really early big storms," says senior research meteorologist Hugh Willoughby of Florida International University in Miami, "that means it is likely to be an active season."

That's just what 65 million Americans living on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts don't want to hear.

Hurricanes are among nature's most fearsome events.

A storm can span 400 miles and tower 10 miles high.

Inhaling energy from warm seawater, it might churn for a week or more across 3,000 miles before it collapses.

Some people still are rebuilding from last year when five hurricanes and four tropical storms pounded the Atlantic and Caribbean basins in August and September.

At least four of the storms caused hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in damages.

Scientists called it a "once in a lifetime kind of a year."

Did they speak too soon?

Maybe.

That's because the meteorological conditions that spawned last season's destruction are persisting in the Atlantic and Caribbean basins this year, and possibly for decades to come.

Forecaster William Gray at Colorado State University has upped his 2005 Atlantic hurricane forecast three times since December, beginning with 11 named storms, then 13, then 15.

Now he is saying the number of named storms will be "significantly above" the long-term average of 9.6 named storms and 5.9 hurricanes.

At least four storms may blow up into major hurricanes like Dennis, nearly twice as many as normal.

The chance of a major hurricane making landfall somewhere on the East Coast, including the Florida peninsula, is nearly twice as high as in an average year, Gray says.

For the Gulf coast from Pensacola, Fla. to Brownsville, Texas, the risk is about one-third higher.

Gray and others base their judgments on several measurements of atmospheric and ocean conditions worldwide.

Quiet hurricane seasons coincide with El Nino conditions in the Pacific.

When Pacific water temperatures rise, it changes global wind patterns.

High in the atmosphere, wind shear knocks down storms that arise in the Atlantic, preventing many from reaching wind speeds of at least 74 mph.

But in stormy years like 2005, Atlantic sea surface temperatures are warming above 81 degrees.

Without much wind shear, humid westerly winds from Africa's bulge grow stronger.

The warmer ocean heats the air in a rising column, creating a center of moist low pressure.

Trade winds rush in toward this depression.

Combined with the planet's rotation, they spin clouds counterclockwise around this steamy core, or "eye" of the storm.

Conditions in the Gulf of Mexico can perpetuate these storms over days and hundreds of miles.

Normally, the Gulf consists of a thin layer of warm water that rides atop a foundation of cold seawater.

When storms cross into the basin, the winds churn these layers and the colder water pulls the plug on the storm's motor.

But sometimes, the large Loop Current spawns deep pockets of warm water called eddies that move east-to-west and cover up to 20 percent across the Gulf.

If a hurricane happens to pass over one of these eddies, it acts like a shot of espresso and re-caffeinates the storm.

Louisiana state climatologist Barry Keim says surface temperatures in the Gulf are at least 81 degrees, adding to the dangerous conditions.

"This is going to be a big, bad storm," Keim said of Hurricane Dennis.

"The fuel for the storm is the energy of the evaporation off the Gulf surface."

"Warmer water means more fuel to feed the system."

Experts believe the current hurricane surge is part of an obvious storm cycle.

Roughly from 1970-94, Atlantic hurricane activity in the United States was relatively mild.

But 1995-2004 is the most active 10 consecutive hurricane seasons on record, Gray says.

The cycle of heightened activity could last another 20 years or more.

The trend is believed to be a consequence of natural salinity and temperature changes in the Atlantic's deep current circulation that shift back and forth every 40-60 years.

Keim says the last year there were this many named storms early in the storm season was 1959, with the fourth named on July 7, 1959.

In 1900, there were four storms by mid-July, but only one made landfall, Willoughby said.

The above language from the Penal Law of the State of New York, of course, was from back in 1986, or so, back in the days when some pretext was still being made in New York State about caring that the money and power derived by organized crime through its illegal enterprises and endeavors was increasingly being used to infiltrate and corrupt businesses, unions and other legitimate enterprises and to corrupt our democratic processes in the State of New York, and likely, in OUR America, as well, but specifically, the State of New York, which has been subsequently judged to be one of the ten most corrupt states in the United States, which honor New York State has worked hard to achieve, in large part by simply doing away with OUR democratic processes, which were corrupted anyway, so why bother pretending anymore that we still had them?

Truth be told, by 1986, some enterprising young men in positions of power in New York State realized what an untapped potential all this "rackets" money represented, to them, if they could but find a way to exploit that opportunity, and so, a marriage of convenience was formed ....

People with lots of illegal money need places to launder that money, such a strip malls and subdivisions, and so ....

Here, in this local newspaper article which follows, from George Pataki's CAPITOL of Albany, New York, is where New York State is today with respect to hero worship of money, and gambling, which is now going to be the SAVIOR of New York State's "economy".

In the earliest days of this nation's history, at the time of the rebellion against English corruption, virtue was considered a thing of importance, here in OUR America, such as it was at that time!

Since then, of course, the politicians have found that virtue does not line their pockets very well, and so, we have had to give up virtue up here, as being "un-American", in that it is bad for the economy, and now "sin" is the big ticket item up here, and make no mistake about that, whatsoever!

Poker player hoping victory is in the cards - Ryan Puckey of Latham wins the chance to face the best in Las Vegas"

By DAVID FILKINS, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Saturday, July 9, 2005

Gut-check time came well after midnight for Ryan Puckey.

He stared at the monitor, down on his luck and nearly broke.

The numbers weren't lying.

Of 200 players remaining in the low-risk, high-anxiety online poker game, Puckey's chip count was 190th.

There was little left to lose.

So he did it.

He clicked "All in."

Puckey won that hand.

And the next.

And the one after that.

By night's end, the 27-year-old Latham resident had defeated 300 others in a pokerstars.com no-limit Texas hold'em satellite tournament, one of two he won on consecutive nights in May.

The prize wasn't monetary.

Rather, it was an invitation to the $60 million World Series of Poker, which began Thursday in Las Vegas.

The Internet poker provider paid Puckey's $10,000 registration fee, airfare and nine-night stay at Sin City resort Treasure Island.

In return, he has to wear the company's logo when he sits down for his opening-round game this afternoon and at any subsequent games, should he advance.

Puckey also gets to keep the shirts, hats and jacket with which he was furnished.

All on a $3 investment.

"Overwhelming," Puckey said Friday as he surveyed the tournament floor at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino.

"The playing field is bigger than a football field."

"There are over 200 tables in here."

He is one of 5,661 vying for the $7.5 million first prize.

The field is composed of high-profile players, avid gamblers and contest winners like Puckey.

He'll likely face opposition of each kind when he takes his seat for today's 11-hour marathon.

Puckey said his expectations are extremely low.

"I'm not a great player," he said.

"I just started playing hold'em last year."

"Some of these players have real experience, reading people's faces and finding out what they have."

"If I get eliminated in the first 20 minutes, I still got a paid vacation."

"There will be no complaints."

Phil Ivey, a 27-year-old winner of five "bracelets" -- the poker equivalent of a Super Bowl ring -- is listed on the betting site bodog.com as the favorite at 200-1.

Odds for Puckey, of course, weren't even listed.

That doesn't mean he should be low on optimism.

The last two World Series of Poker champions, Greg Raymer in 2004 and Chris Moneymaker in 2003, entered via satellite victories on pokerstars.com as well.

Puckey began watching poker on television a few years ago.

Casual viewing eventually turned him into a "huge fan."

He joined the site in March at the urging of poker-playing friends.

He spends an hour or two each day playing online, rarely for money.

He wouldn't have joined the tournament he ended up winning had the entry fee not been $3.

"He does it purely for fun," said Puckey's mother, Lorraine.

"He's definitely an amateur."

"That's why he doesn't expect to get very far."

Should the unthinkable happen, Puckey, a maintenance worker at Shaker High School, has a few ideas for his winnings.

"I'd retire," he said.

"You try not to think about something like that so you won't be disappointed when you lose."

"But it's impossible to keep it entirely out of your head."

"I'm a pretty relaxed person, so I'm staying calm."

"It would be great to have a pro or celebrity at my table, and even better to knock them out."

He'll have moral support once play begins.

Puckey's girlfriend, Kara Mates, is flying to Las Vegas this morning.

Her flight was paid for with the money left over from Puckey's $1,000 airfare allowance.

Mates was confident, despite the odds.

"He's an exceptional player," said Mates, 26.

"I hope he goes all the way."

"But if he doesn't, it's OK."

"We'll get to see the sights together."

"It's crazy."

"It's the chance of a lifetime."

end quotes

As George Pataki says, "ALL IT TAKES, KIDS, IS A DOLLAR AND A DREAM!"

Throw out those schoolbooks, they are for sissies!

Forget hard work, that is for fools!

"A DOLLAR AND A DREAM", and the State of New York has some candy, just for you!

Yeah, right, George!

"Condo crazy at the heart of a boom"

By Ron Scherer, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Fri Jul 8, 4:00 AM ET

CORAL SPRINGS, FLA. - For four humid days and three sweaty nights, Michael Bergman and Karen Bolber camped outside an apartment complex that was converting to condominium ownership.

They endured thunderstorms, the threat of a hurricane, and mosquitoes from the nearby Everglades.

But it was all worth it, says Mr. Bergman, a real estate broker with RE/MAX Partners in Coral Springs.

Once the condo's sales office opened, he and Ms. Bolber, also a real estate broker, bought $3 million worth of property for clients in Connecticut, New York, and Florida.

He envisions some of those investors quickly selling their stakes and making $50,000 to $60,000.

"It was worth eight or ten mosquito bites," he says.

Lines of people waiting to buy condos for quick profits and white-hot real estate - it's all part of what some analysts are calling the biggest real estate bubble in America.

In Miami, the construction crane could become the new state bird as some 25,00 new units are punching into the skyline - with another 40,000 on the drawing board.

And with prices going up 27 to 37 percent per year in the past two years, some buildings' ownership is up to 70 percent investors.

The huge new supply of condos, combined with sharply rising prices, is causing some to break out the storm-warning flags.

"There is a four- to five- year supply of condos hitting the market in the next 2-1/2 years," says Jack McCabe of McCabe Research & Consulting in Deerfield Beach.

"While the fundamentals are strong long term - some 1,000 people a day move to Florida - there could be some adjustments due to oversupply."

Recently, Merrill Lynch & Co., in a report called "Mega Metro Bubbles," ranked Miami as the hottest housing market in the nation for the third year in a row.

Lehman Brothers housing guru Joe Abate says Miami, like California, is "frothy and speculative," with home prices rising faster than income levels.

And Peter Schiff, president of stock-brokerage firm Euro Pacific Capital, says "I'll probably buy a few myself - they'll be in foreclosure."

'A lot more difficult to afford housing'

For economists, one of the red flags in Miami, as in other white-hot markets, is the home-price-to-income ratio.

The higher the ratio, the more the buyer has to stretch to make payments.

Since 2001, home prices in Miami are up 85 percent, nearly double the national average, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.

At the same time, per capita income growth has averaged below 3 percent.

"It's getting a lot more difficult to afford housing," says Claudia Lokody, a Merrill Lynch economist who worked on the firm's report.

Of course, some Floridians shrug off the negative talk.

"It's all people who don't live here," says Mr. Bergman.

Indeed, some say the booming real estate market in Miami is merely reflecting demographic changes.

Of the 1,000 people per day who move to Florida, some 28 percent move to the southern part of the state.

Many of those - some 36 percent - are foreign-born, attracted to the tropical city with its mix of Latino culture and "Miami Vice" sex appeal.

Many want their children educated in the US - or at least in a place denominated in US dollars.

At the same time, Miami has become a gateway to Latin American commerce, something that is sure to expand, especially with the city a candidate to host the secretariat of the proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement.

"It would cause another boost to the urban core," says Michael Cannon, managing director of Integra Realty Resources in Miami.

"It would be like a mini-UN."

The drive for irresistible marketing

Baby boomers, hoping to escape northern winters, are buying second homes in the Sunshine State.

"The big story is the return of the American buyer," says Ron Shuffield, president of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell Inc. realtors, who are marketing the Metropolitan, a huge residential and commercial complex in downtown Miami.

If the boomers want to live in South Florida, they are likely to find their choices limited - there are few undeveloped blocks left for new single-family developments.

The Everglades are a boundary on one side, the Atlantic on the other side.

One indication of the diminishing amount of space for development: 58 percent of sales are now condos, compared with 42 percent for single-family houses, says Mr. Shuffield.

Even downtown Miami is rapidly getting built out.

As a result, developers are spreading to other areas such as North Bay Village, an enclave built on landfill in the middle of Biscayne Bay.

One of those buildings is the Lexi, a 19-story development with 164 units.

The Lexi is typical of how the Florida real estate market works.

Developer Scott Greenwald purchased a 1970s-style shopping center, and even before the bulldozers had leveled the property, Kirschner Realty International, one of the area's leading marketing organizations, opened up a sales office.

Giant photos showed the view looking down Biscayne Bay.

The marketing was like candy: Kirschner quickly presold 80 percent of the 164 units, which will be ready for occupancy in the spring of 2007.

As the units sold, the prices rose.

"The pricing started in the low [$300,000], and it's now up to the mid-$500s for a similar unit," says Charles Kirschner.

In fact, Mr. Kirschner says the pricing model for condos is the same as for hotels or airlines.

"As there are fewer units left, it drives the pricing."

Sometimes the price hikes happen in a matter of hours.

Kirschner recently managed the Coral Springs conversion that Bergman waited in line for.

The first people in line received discounts that brought prices below market value.

Through the day, prices rose.

"Otherwise you can't create a frenzied atmosphere," says Kirschner.

How to address soaring demand

The pace may even get faster - if that's possible.

Mark Zilbert, a Miami real estate broker, recently announced plans for "Condo Flip," an Internet-based marketplace where buyers, sellers, brokers, real estate agents, and developers can "flip" condominiums - selling and reselling contracts for them - even before they are built.

"There is a genuine demand that we are about to face and this is a way to address the demand," says Mr. Zilbert, who says he has had inquiries about his plan from all over the world.

The demand he refers to is the expected flood of sellers once some of the projects get their certificates of occupancy.

"I estimate 80 percent of the buyers of these units have an interest in reselling," he says, "but I'm not sure we have the capability to resell such a large number."

"But we can if we expand the buyer base to include someone in France who doesn't know a condo is for sale in Miami, or a buyer from New York who is looking for a retirement place."

All these plans remind some of the other real estate booms in South Florida.

In the 1920s, slick-talking salesmen sold 25,000 lots to tourists until the Depression deflated the land rush.

Again in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s, Florida underwent booms and busts.

"If there is a cycle recently, it seems to be every ten years," says Mr. Cannon.

"We're in the 13th year of a 10-year cycle."

Ethan Harris, chief economist at Lehman Brothers, says almost anything can cause a real estate bubble to burst.

He recalls a Dutch real estate mania that fizzled after a television station aired a story about the boom.

Now the CBS news program "60 Minutes" is working on a Miami condo-craze story.

Although he, too, is worried about the future of the real estate market, Bergman's most pressing concern is another condo conversion that will happen soon in Delray Beach.

He and Ms. Bolber will be there.

"There's no shade anywhere," he says.

"We'll be going through the water and Gatorade."

Ah, life in George W. Bush's version of America!

If you are a corporate con-man of some sort, or a scientist who wants to get big bucks for telling lies, or an engineer who will look the other way for a certain sum in your pocket, or bank account, I suppose you just have to love it here!

As for everybody else .....

"Allegations of Fake Research Hit New High"

By MARTHA MENDOZA, AP National Writer

Sat Jul 9, 6:32 PM ET

Allegations of misconduct by U.S. researchers reached record highs last year as the Department of Health and Human Services received 274 complaints — 50 percent higher than 2003 and the most since 1989 when the federal government established a program to deal with scientific misconduct.

Chris Pascal, director of the federal Office of Research Integrity, said its 28 staffers and $7 million annual budget haven't kept pace with the allegations.

The result: Only 23 cases were closed last year.

Of those, eight individuals were found guilty of research misconduct.

In the past 15 years, the office has confirmed about 185 cases of scientific misconduct.

Research suggests this is but a small fraction of all the incidents of fabrication, falsification and plagiarism.

In a survey published June 9 in the journal Nature, about 1.5 percent of 3,247 researchers who responded admitted to falsification or plagiarism. (One in three admitted to some type of professional misbehavior.)

On the night of his 12th wedding anniversary, Dr. Andrew Friedman was terrified.

This brilliant surgeon and researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School feared that he was about to lose everything — his career, his family, the life he'd built — because his boss was coming closer and closer to the truth:

For the past three years, Friedman had been faking — actually making up — data in some of the respected, peer-reviewed studies he had published in top medical journals.

"It is difficult for me to describe the degree of panic and irrational thought that I was going through," he would later tell an inquiry panel at Harvard.

On this night, March 13, 1995, he had been ordered in writing by his department chair to clear up what appeared to be suspicious data.

But Friedman didn't clear things up.

"I did something which was the worst possible thing I could have done," he testified.

He went to the medical record room, and for the next three or four hours he pulled out permanent medical files of a handful of patients.

Then, covered up his lies, scribbling in the information he needed to support his study.

"I created data."

"I made it up."

"I also made up patients that were fictitious," he testified.

Friedman's wife met him at the door when he came home that night.

He wept uncontrollably.

The next morning he had an emergency appointment with his psychiatrist.

But he didn't tell the therapist the truth, and his lies continued for 10 more days, during which time he delivered a letter, and copies of the doctored files, to his boss.

Eventually he broke down, admitting first to his wife and psychiatrist, and later to his colleagues and managers, what he had been doing.

Friedman formally confessed, retracted his articles, apologized to colleagues and was punished.

Today he has resurrected his career, as senior director of clinical research at Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company.

He refused to speak with the Associated Press.

But his case, recorded in a seven-foot-high stack of documents at the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, tells a story of one man's struggle with power, lies and the crushing pressure of academia.

Some other cases have made headlines:

_On July 18, Eric Poehlman, once a prominent nutrition researcher, will be sentenced in federal court in Vermont for fabricating research data to obtain a $542,000 federal grant while working as a professor at the University of Vermont College of Medicine.

He faces up to five years in prison.

Poehlman, 49, made up research between 1992 and 2000 on issues like menopause, aging and hormone supplements to win millions of dollars in grant money from the federal government.

He is the first researcher to be permanently barred from ever receiving federal research grants again.

In 2001, while he was being investigated, Poehlman left the medical school and was awarded a $1 million chair in nutrition and metabolism at the University of Montreal, where officials say they were unaware of his problems.

He resigned in January when his contract expired.

_In March, Dr. Gary Kammer, a Wake Forest University rheumatology professor and leading lupus expert, was found to have made up two families and their medical conditions in grant applications to the National Institutes of Health.

He has resigned from the university and has been suspended from receiving federal grants for three years.

_In November, 2004, federal officials found that Dr. Ali Sultan, an award-winning malaria researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, had plagiarized text and figures, and falsified his data — substituting results from one type of malaria for another — on a grant application for federal funds to study malaria drugs.

When brought before an inquiry committee, Sultan tried to pin the blame on a postdoctoral student.

Sultan resigned and is now a faculty member at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, according to a spokeswoman there.

While the cases are high-profile, scientists have been cheating for decades.

In 1974, Dr. William Summerlin, a top-ranking Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute researcher, used a marker to make black patches of fur on white mice in an attempt to prove his new skin graft technique was working.

His case prompted Al Gore, then a young Democratic congressman from Tennessee, to hold the first congressional hearings on the issue.

"At the base of our involvement in research lies the trust of American people and the integrity of the scientific exercise," said Gore at the time.

As a result of their hearings, Congress passed a law in 1985 requiring institutions that receive federal money for scientific research to have some system to report rulebreakers.

"Often we're confronted with people who are brilliant, absolutely incredible researchers, but that's not what makes them great scientists."

"It's the character," said Debbi Gilad, a research compliance and integrity officer at the University of California, Davis, which has taken a lead on handling scientific misconduct.

David Wright, a Michigan State University professor who has researched why scientists cheat, said there are four basic reasons: some sort of mental disorder; foreign nationals who learned somewhat different scientific standards; inadequate mentoring; and, most commonly, tremendous and increasing professional pressure to publish studies.

His inability to handle that pressure, Friedman testified, was his downfall.

"And it was almost as though you're on a treadmill that starts out slowly and gradually increases in speed."

"And it happens so gradually you don't realize that eventually you're just hoping you don't fall off," he told a magistrate during a state hearing in 1995.

"You're sprinting near the end and taking it all you can not to fall off."

At the time he started cheating, Friedman was in his late 30s, married and a father of two young children.

Following the path of his father, grandfather and uncle who were all doctors and medical researchers, he was an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School and chief of the department of reproductive endocrinology at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

His reputation was tremendous and his work groundbreaking.

His 30-page resume highlighted numerous awards and honors, lectures in Canada, Europe and Australia, and more than 150 articles, book chapters, reviews and abstracts.

Of those, 58 were original research articles, where he had designed studies, conducted clinical trials, enrolled patients, collected and analyzed data and made conclusions.

In the end, investigators found — and Friedman confessed — to making up information for three separate journal articles (one of them never published) involving hormonal treatment of gynecological conditions.

He testified that he was working 80 to 90 hours a week, seeing patients two days a week, doing surgery one day a week, supervising medical residents, serving on as many as 10 different committees at the hospital and the medical school and putting on national medical conferences.

He did seek help, both from a psychiatrist, who counseled him to cut back, and from his boss, who demanded Friedman increase his research and refused to reduce Friedman's patient load.

As good as Friedman was as a doctor, surgeon and researcher, he was actually a lousy cheater.

One thing that brought about his demise, in fact, was that the initials he used for fictitious patients were the same as those of residents and faculty members in his program.

Unlike many scientists who file immediate lawsuits when they're caught, Friedman was repentant, resigning from his positions at both Brigham and Women's, and Harvard.

In 1996, Friedman agreed to be excluded for three years from working on federally funded research.

During the next three years he consulted with drug companies, he paid a $10,000 fine to the state of Massachusetts and surrendered his medical license for a year, became very active with the American Red Cross, donating more than 500 hours, and attended several lectures on ethics and record-keeping.

"Andy can never undo the damage that his actions have caused."

"However, he has paid the price — his academic career is ruined, his reputation sullied, and his personal shame unremitting," wrote Dr. Charles Lockwood, then chair of obstetrics and gynecology at New York University School of Medicine, in a letter on Friedman's behalf.

In 1999, after successfully petitioning to get his license reinstated, he went to work as director of women's health care at Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceuticals.

The job, which he still has, involves designing and reviewing clinical trials for hormonal birth control, writing package insert labels and lecturing to doctors.

Lately he's appeared on television and in newspaper articles responding to concerns about the safety of the birth control patch.

Mary Anne Wyatt, a retired biochemist in Natick, Mass., is one of several former patients.

"I think it's not at all surprising that a drug company would hire somebody who is very comfortable with hiding the effects of very dangerous drugs," said Wyatt, who unsuccessfully sued him.

Ortho-McNeil spokeswoman Bonnie Jacobs said the company was well aware of Friedman's history when it hired him.

"He is an excellent doctor, an asset to our company," she said.

"Dennis Strengthens, Heads for Gulf Coast"

By DAVID ROYSE, Associated Press Writer

15 minutes ago

FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. - Hurricane Dennis closed in on the Gulf Coast on Sunday after strengthening into a dangerous Category 4 storm, plowing toward a region still recovering from a hurricane 10 months ago.

Rain blew sideways and wind exceeded 45 mph in some spots as the storm closed in on the Gulf Coast, sending rolling waves smashing over piers and onto the coast.

Landfall was expected late Sunday afternoon somewhere along the coast of the Florida Panhandle, Alabama or Mississippi, where nearly 1.4 million people were under evacuation orders and some towns were left almost deserted.

After weakening to a Category 1 storm over Cuba, Dennis strengthened in the Gulf on Saturday and became a Category 4 storm again early Sunday, with top sustained winds of 145 mph.

"Category 4 is not just a little bit worse — it's much worse," said Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

"Damage increases exponentially as the wind speed increases."

"And no matter where it makes actual landfall, it's going to have a tremendous impact well away from the center."

Dennis' would be the earliest Category 4 hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Audrey struck the Louisiana and Texas coasts in June 1957, according to the hurricane center.

The center has no record of a Category 4 storm ever hitting Florida's Panhandle or Alabama.

Hurricane-force winds stretched out up to 40 miles from Dennis' center, and they could go as far as 175 miles inland, forecasters said.

A data buoy about 50 miles offshore recorded a 33-foot high wave in the Gulf.

The worst weather from hurricanes is typically on the front right side of the storm, in this case to the east of where it hits.

That puts places like Mobile, Ala., Pensacola and Fort Walton Beach firmly in the crosshairs.

Blamed for at least 20 deaths in Haiti and Cuba, Dennis carried a threat of more than a foot of rain plus waves on top of storm surge up to 15 feet in the same area that was pummeled by Hurricane Ivan last September.

Some buildings still had scaffolding around them as repairs went on.

Piles of debris from Ivan lay in streets, ready to be launched into the air by fierce winds.

"I think there is a legitimate feeling, 'Why me? What did I do wrong?'" Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said.

Before entering the Gulf, Dennis swung around the Florida Keys and dealt a glancing blow, flooding streets and knocking out power.

As night fell Saturday and the first bands of rain started hitting Fort Walton Beach, nearly every business was closed.

One exception was Joe and Eddie's, a diner providing short breaks for sheriff's deputies working 12-hour shifts.

"It's the only place around that's open," deputy Jim Welch said.

About 700,000 people were under evacuation orders in Florida, as were 500,000 in Alabama and 190,000 in Mississippi.

Shelters were open and traffic doubled on some highways as people fled inland.

Alabama officials turned Interstate 65 into a one-way route north from the coast to Montgomery.

In Pensacola, a 70-year-old man at a special needs shelters died, but it appeared to be due to natural causes, Escambia County sheriff's investigator Terry Kilgore said.

Police went through waterfront neighborhoods in coastal Panhandle cities advising residents of the mandatory evacuation orders.

In Fort Walton Beach, they didn't have any problem convincing Pat Gosney, who remained in his house across the street from an offshoot of Choctawhatchee Bay during Hurricane Ivan last year.

"That's why we're leaving," Gosney said.

"We'll never stay again."

At 9 a.m. EDT, Dennis' eye was about 125 miles south-southeast of Pensacola in the Panhandle and 175 miles southeast of Pascagoula, Miss.

It was moving north at about 16 mph and expected to turn more to the northwest before landfall, forecasters said.

In the southern tip of Florida early Sunday, power was back to more than three-quarters of the 428,000 homes and businesses who had outages when Dennis' eye passed 125 miles to the west of Key West a day earlier.

Exposed at the tip of Florida's Peninsula, Key West last endured a direct hit from a hurricane in 1948.

"We were lucky, no doubt about it," said Jim Hendrick as he picked up branches in front of his house.

For Gulf Coast residents, the approaching hurricane was all too familiar.

"I have my moments of bitterness, but I'm OK," said Andrea Walter of Gulf Breeze, whose house was seriously damaged by Ivan.

"You can't get too discouraged or you'll go crazy."
___

Associated Press writers Coralie Carlson in Key West, Bill Kaczor in Pensacola, Mark Long in Panama City, Bob Johnson in Gulf Shores, Ala., Brett Martel in New Orleans and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.

"I think there is a legitimate feeling, 'Why me? What did I do wrong?'" Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said.

Maybe, Jebbie, it's just a whole lot of Bush-family bad karma coming back to bite you and yours right hard on the ***!

There's where my money is going anyway, if I were to be a betting man!

Or who knows, maybe it's just the luck of the draw, and you lost!

"Iraq warns neighbours of terror threat"

Sun Jul 10, 6:47 AM ET

KUWAIT CITY (AFP) - Iraq warned that the cycle of terror and violence raging in the war-torn nation could spread to its neighbours as a result of ongoing military campaigns against insurgency.

"Military pressure on terror organisations in Iraq will force it to export its operations across the border and certainly neighbouring states are the nearest for the spread of these terrorists," Iraqi government spokesman Leith Kubba told Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas.

"All of us are within the danger circle and all countries should support Iraq to help it get out of this terror swamp which constitutes a danger to all," Kubba said Sunday.

The Iraqi official said "terrorists" are infiltrating from Arab neighbours Syria and Saudi Arabia.

"You should ask Syria and Saudi Arabia from where terrorists come ... You should ask them for the reasons of the infiltration through their borders ... so the Iraqi nightmare comes to an end," Kubba said.

"Unfortunately Iraq has become a big school for terror after leading terrorists have moved from Afghanistan into Iraq."

Iraqi officials have repeatedly warned that the return of thousands of Al Qaeda-linked operatives to their home countries after the end of insurgency will lead to terror attacks in those countries.

Saudi Arabia's Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz said Saturday he expected militants who will return from fighting in Iraq to be worse than Afghan war returnees, who have been largely blamed for violence in the country.

Scores of Saudis are believed to be among foreign combatants who have infiltrated Iraq to fight US-led forces and the US-backed Iraqi government.

end quotes

Back in the Viet Nam times, here in OUR America, when George W. Bush was working harder than he ever worked before to keep himself from having to go to Viet Nam, as was his mentor and present-day handler Dick Cheney, there was a song with words in it to the effect of "Try to set the world on fire!"

Well, I think that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have lived their dream as it is expressed in the words to that song!

They might actually have succeeded in doing that, after all these years of getting themselves ready for the occasion!

They might actually have done it, set the world on fire, that is, and now, I wonder what they will do for their encore?

Fiddle, while the world burns?

Hmmmmmm ......

"State dam safety program under scrutiny after break - Watchdogs and engineers question sufficiency of DEC agency's funding, staffing"

By MATT PACENZA, Staff writer, Albany, New York Times Union
First published: Sunday, July 10, 2005

FORT ANN -- Raphael Colb watched Saturday night as the trickling stream that winds through his 35 acres became a shrieking river within 10 feet of his home.

After a newly built dam on Hadlock Pond burst that gorgeous summer evening, up to 1 billion gallons of water tore through his neighborhood.

"We have pieces of boats hanging from trees 30 feet up in the middle of the woods," Colb said.

"It changed the landscape completely."

"Thank God no one was hurt."

"Thank God I still have my home."

One week after the Hadlock dam ruptured, sparing lives but destroying four homes and damaging a dozen others, engineers and state officials are trying to figure out what happened.

Interviews with dam experts and Hadlock Pond residents suggest the problem was a design flaw or construction problem in the face of the 450-foot-long, 35-foot-high earth embankment dam.

A weak spot became a fissure that sprung a leak and carved a hole, ultimately tearing a 65-foot-wide chasm in the face of the dam.

The origin of that problem may not be known for weeks or even months.

But watchdog groups and available data raise serious questions about insufficient resources at the dam safety unit of the Department of Environmental Conservation, the state agency charged with making sure thousands of dams in New York remain safe.

By the numbers, New York does not have a robust dam safety program, according to a 2004 state-by-state comparison by the Association of Dam Safety Officials.

The DEC has five full-time members in its dam safety unit.

They are charged with keeping an eye on 5,021 dams statewide, a ratio of 947 dams for every employee.

The national average is 260 dams for every dam safety employee.

New York ranks 43rd out of 50 states by that measure.

It also spends less on dam safety than other states do.

The total budget of $746,000 works out to $149 for every dam in the state.

The national average is $318.

Those numbers provide a rough indicator of the quality of a state's program, said Meg Galloway, a safety engineer with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

"A well-funded, well-staffed dam safety program will be a safer program," said Galloway, president of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

Fragality beneath facades

A dam break conjures images of an old, crumbling structure.

In fact, new dams fail frequently.

Precise numbers aren't available, but construction or design flaws are among four principal causes of dam collapses, experts say, along with catastrophic weather, a structure's age and operator error, as when someone fails to open a spillway.

One of the most famous dam collapses in U.S. history happened when the new Teton Dam in Idaho failed just as its reservoir was being filled.

The 1976 incident killed 14 people and caused nearly $1 billion in damage.

"If there are weak links from design, construction, whatever, they often raise their heads early," said Marty McCann, director of the National Performance of Dams Program at Stanford University, which collects data on dam failures.

His data show dams are more likely to fail in the first five years than at any other point in their life span.

A dam was first built to create Hadlock Pond in 1897.

In 1978, the Army Corps of Engineers found the dam's spillway wasn't large enough to handle a major rainstorm.

Residents raised money to rebuild part of the dam and repair some of its features.

Over time, the area become more developed.

Today, more than 200 year-round and seasonal homes dot the shores.

In the mid-1990s, the DEC told residents and officials the agency had again determined the dam posed a safety problem in the event of a massive rainstorm.

In 2003, the town of Fort Ann entered into an agreement with the DEC to build a new dam.

The town hired a New Hampshire-based engineering firm, HTE Northeast Inc., to design the dam.

It was built by Kubricky Construction Corp. of Queensbury, a division of DA Collins, a Glens Falls construction and environmental services firm that built the Twin Bridges on the Northway.

Work on the new structure began in September, after contractors slowly drained the lake and tore down the old dam.

The job was halted during the winter's coldest months and was completed in May.

The pond then slowly filled with rainwater until it reached capacity about three weeks before the collapse.

Representatives of HTE and DA Collins did not return phone calls seeking comment on their work at Hadlock Pond.

Fort Ann officials also did not respond to inquiries about the process by which those companies received the contracts to build and design the dam.

Anatomy of a break

One thing is sure: The collapse of the dam was not caused by the weather.

The day it broke, the sun was out.

Just 0.54 inches of rain fell the day before, according to the nearby National Weather Service station in Glens Falls.

Lakeside residents say the water was not rising in the days before the rupture, as it sometimes did after periods of heavy rain.

Dams are designed to handle catastrophic storms.

The first safety valve is the dam's spillway, a chute typically made of concrete at a lake's lip that drains off excess water.

Some dams have more than one.

When heavy rains fall and hillside streams pour into a lake, raising water levels, the volume of water pouring through the spillway will increase.

If the spillway maxes out and water levels keep rising, some dams have another safety feature, called fuse plugs.

Fuse plugs are a type of secondary spillway, points in the dam that are designed to fail in a controlled fashion to release rising water if the spillway can't handle it all.

The Hadlock Pond dam had two 50-foot, earthen fuse plugs, which town officials have said opened during the dam's collapse.

Fuse plug failures have been the cause of other new dam collapses, most notably in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where a renovated dam on the Silver Lake Basin burst in May 2003, destroying 20 homes and doing more than $100 million in damage.

In the days before that collapse, upper Michigan had been hit by heavy rains.

The lack of similar high waters in Fort Ann is why Bob Pettersen -- president of the Lake Hadlock Association, which has about 130 homeowner members -- doubts the fuse plugs caused the dam's collapse.

The plugs were above the pond's water level, so they wouldn't have been under pressure before the break.

"We didn't even have water pouring out of the spillway," Pettersen said.

"Every time I hear that it was the fuse plugs, that makes no sense to me."

This suggests the dam probably failed at some point below the water level, below the spillway, on the structure's earthen face.

One likely scenario is that once the dam was filled, the pressure of hundreds of millions of gallons found a weak point.

Water would have begun to seep and spread throughout the dam -- a process called piping -- creating a fissure that expanded.

"When the flow of water is sufficient to begin moving material, all of a sudden you'll have a hole in the embankment," McCann said.

"As that continues, the embankment will begin to collapse."

"It's a very, very common problem in the context of dams that have failed."

Anecdotal evidence suggests the dam was leaking the morning of the collapse, which would support the piping hypothesis.

"My wife came to me Saturday morning and said, 'They're drawing the water down,' " recalled Terry Potter, a lakeside resident and treasurer of the lake association.

"She said the line on our dock was down a little bit from normal."

The DEC has brought in an outside consultant to aid in its probe.

Investigators will examine the parts of the dam that remain and those that washed downstream, some miles away.

They'll also review the project's design and construction documents.

"In a fairly large construction project, everything is fair game," said Galloway.

DEC officials have said they're looking into the possibility the collapse may be linked to a minor geological fault in the area.

Pettersen doubts that explanation -- a purportedly flawed dam had survived on that fault for more than 100 years, after all.

"When you have a problem, you ask yourself 'What changed?' " he said.

"What changed was we had a new dam."

Dam safety program faulted

Sharp criticism of the DEC comes from the watchdog group Environmental Advocates of New York, which is amid a study of the agency's dam safety program.

The agency doesn't do enough inspections, said Rob Moore, the group's executive director.

"They are unable to get around to the vast majority of the dams in the state that are regulated."

The group says the DEC has inspected only an average of 250 dams a year between 2002 and 2004, based upon documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request.

That means just 15 percent of all dams statewide have even been looked at in the past three years.

DEC could not confirm that figure.

Its records show an average of 415 dam inspections per year over the past five years.

But some of those dams -- like Hadlock Pond -- were looked at more than once, explaining the discrepancy between the numbers.

State inspections are important not only to spot problems in existing dams but to review projects before and during construction, Galloway said.

"They may notice materials that aren't up to spec," she said.

"They're a pair of new eyes and may see something that the person who is there day to day isn't noticing because it has become so routine."

A DEC staff member visited Hadlock Pond four times during construction, according to the agency.

The last trip was in April.

The agency did not visit the site after the dam was completed.

State legislators have pushed the DEC about whether it has enough employees to handle all of the agency's responsibilities.

"When you look at the staffing levels, they're obviously significantly down," said Tom DiNapoli, D-Long Island, chairman of the Assembly's Environmental Conservation Committee.

According to Environmental Advocates, DEC has approximately 700 fewer full-time employees today than it did in the early 1990s, when it had slightly more than 4,000.

Over that same period, the number of staff in the dam safety unit has dropped from seven to five, according to the DEC.

Every state agency has taken a hit during difficult budget times, DiNapoli pointed out.

But he does not believe DEC leaders, whom he questions during budget hearings, are willing to acknowledge that some of their work -- like dam safety oversight -- has suffered.

"Hopefully something like a dam collapse will get them to pay attention to some areas where they have staffing needs," DiNapoli said.

Locals are most interested in the question of who will help them now.

Who will repair their roads, clean up their land, replace or fix their homes and rebuild their dam?

Nearly all eyes are on the state, especially the DEC.

Residents hope the state steps up to make good for those who lost so much.

"New York state was mandating the dam be rebuilt."

"New York state was overseeing the dam's construction," Pettersen said.

"Now New York state needs to come in and help these people."

Matt Pacenza can be reached at 454-5533 or by e-mail at mpacenza@timesunion.com.

"Rove's lawyer acknowledges he was Time reporter's source"

Sun Jul 10, 4:36 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Top White House aide Karl Rove discussed a former US ambassador and his CIA agent wife with a Time magazine reporter, according to a report.

The Newsweek weekly quoted Rove lawyer Robert Luskin as confirming that Rove was the source who gave information to Time reporter Matt Cooper under a pledge of confidentiality, and last week released him to testify about that conversation to a grand jury.

Cooper had been ordered by a US federal judge to testify before the grand jury investigating whether the agent's identity was illegally leaked.

Rove, President George W. Bush's deputy chief of staff, has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about former ambassador Joseph Wilson or his wife, Valerie Plame.

And Luskin told Newsweek last week that his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA."

Plame's name was first published in a column by veteran reporter Robert Novak in 2003, which cited senior administration officials.

Wilson claimed she was outed as punishment for his contradiction of Bush's assertion in the 2003 State of the Union address that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Africa.

Miller researched the story, but didn't write it, and Cooper only mentioned it in passing.

"Salman Rushdie calls for end to 'culture' of rape in India, Pakistan"

Sun Jul 10, 4:01 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - British novelist Salman Rushdie said both India and Pakistan need to overcome a "culture" of rape that oppresses women.

"The 'culture' of rape that exists in India and Pakistan arises from profound social anomalies, its origins lying in the unchanging harshness of a moral code based on the concepts of honor and shame," Rushdie wrote in an opinion column published Sunday in the New York Times.

"Thanks to that code's ruthlessness, raped women will go on hanging themselves in the woods and walking into rivers to drown themselves."

"It will take generations to change that."

"Meanwhile, the law must do what it can."

Women in Pakistan are often subjected to brutal crimes such as murder, rape and being burnt with acid.

In June, Pakistan was criticised by the United States for its handling of another gangrape victim Mukhtaran Mai who was barred from leaving the country to speak to human rights groups.

Pakistan's Supreme Court last week ordered the rearrest of 13 men linked to her case and suspended their acquittals by lower courts.

Rushdie also criticized India, saying the legal system should not recognize decisions by Muslim legal experts such as those from the powerful Islamist seminary Darul-Uloom that deny women their rights.

"At the risk of being called a communalist, I must agree that any country that claims to be a modern, secular democracy must secularize and unify its legal system, and take power over women's lives away, once and for all, from medievalist institutions like Darul-Uloom," Rushdie wrote.

He'll never serve a day. Judith Miller is doing Rove's time

I believing that you are right, jeffmoskin ....

And the BULL **** spinning begins!

"Rove told reporter about Plame’s role at CIA - But Bush aide didn’t identify covert agent by name, attorney says"

By Josh White

Updated: 5:21 a.m. ET July 11, 2005

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove spoke with at least one reporter about Valerie Plame's role at the CIA before she was identified as a covert agent in a newspaper column two years ago, but Rove's lawyer said yesterday that his client did not identify her by name.

Rove had a short conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper on July 11, 2003, three days before Robert D. Novak publicly exposed Plame in a column about her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Wilson had come under attack from the White House for his assertions that he found no evidence Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger and that he reported those findings to top administration officials.

Wilson publicly accused the administration of leaking his wife's identity as a means of retaliation.

Outing a federal case

The leak of Plame's name to the news media spawned a federal grand jury investigation that has been seeking to find the origin of the disclosure.

Cooper avoided jail time last week by agreeing to testify before the grand jury about conversations with his sources, while New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed for refusing to discuss her confidential sources.

To be considered a violation of the law, a disclosure by a government official must have been deliberate, the person doing it must have known that the CIA officer was a covert agent, and he or she must have known that the government was actively concealing the covert agent's identity.

Cooper, according to an internal Time e-mail obtained by Newsweek magazine, spoke with Rove before Novak's column was published.

In the conversation, Rove gave Cooper a "big warning" that Wilson's assertions might not be entirely accurate and that it was not the director of the CIA or the vice president who sent Wilson on his trip.

Rove apparently told Cooper that it was "Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip," according to a story in Newsweek's July 18 issue.

White House link to leak?

Rove's conversation with Cooper could be significant because it indicates a White House official was discussing Plame prior to her being publicly named and could lead to evidence of how Novak learned her name.

Although the information is revelatory, it is still unknown whether Rove is a focus of the investigation.

Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, has said that Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has told him that Rove is not a target of the probe.

Luskin said yesterday that Rove did not know Plame's name and was not actively trying to push the information into the public realm.

Instead, Luskin said, Rove discussed the matter — under the cloak of secrecy — with Cooper at the tail end of a conversation about a different issue.

Cooper had called Rove to discuss other matters on a Friday before deadline, and the topic of Wilson came up briefly.

Luskin said Cooper raised the question.

"Rove did not mention her name to Cooper," Luskin said.

"This was not an effort to encourage Time to disclose her identity."

"What he was doing was discouraging Time from perpetuating some statements that had been made publicly and weren't true."

‘Nothing to hide’

In particular, Rove was urging caution because then-CIA Director George J. Tenet was about to issue a statement regarding Iraq's alleged interest in African uranium and its inaccurate inclusion in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

Tenet took the blame for allowing a misleading paragraph into the speech, but Tenet also said that the president, vice president and other senior officials were never briefed on Wilson's report.

After the investigation into the leak began, Luskin said, Rove signed a waiver in December 2003 or January 2004 authorizing prosecutors to speak to any reporters Rove had previously engaged in discussion, which included Cooper.

"His written waiver included the world," Luskin said.

"It was intended to be a global waiver. . . ."

"He wants to make sure that the special prosecutor has everyone's evidence."

"That reflects someone who has nothing to hide."

Cooper had indicated he would go to jail rather than expose a confidential source, but he agreed last week to cooperate with the grand jury after getting clearance from his source to testify.

Luskin said Cooper had been clear to testify all along — because of the waiver signed 18 months ago — but that the waiver was "reaffirmed" on Wednesday, the day of a hearing to decide whether he and Miller would go to jail.

And speaking of BULL **** spinning, here comes Scottie McClellan now, to lay another dose, right on US ....

"White House Won't Comment on Rove, Leak"

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 2 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - For the better part of two years, the word coming out of the Bush White House was that presidential adviser Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leak of a female CIA officer's identity and that whoever did would be fired.

But Bush spokesman Scott McClellan wouldn't repeat those claims Monday in the face of Rove's own lawyer, Robert Luskin, acknowledging the political operative spoke to Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, one of the reporters who disclosed Valerie Plame's name.

McLellan repeatedly said he couldn't comment because the matter is under investigation.

When it was pointed out he had commented previously even though the investigation was ongoing, he responded: "I've really said all I'm going to say on it."

Democrats jumped on the issue, calling for the administration to fire Rove, or at least to yank his security clearance.

One Democrat pushed for Republicans to hold a congressional hearing in which Rove would testify.

"The White House promised if anyone was involved in the Valerie Plame affair, they would no longer be in this administration," said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

"I trust they will follow through on this pledge."

"If these allegations are true, this rises above politics and is about our national security."

The investigation into the 2003 leak had largely faded into the background until last week, when New York Times reporter Judith Miller went to jail rather than reveal who in the administration talked to her about Plame.

Cooper also had planned to go to jail rather than reveal his source but at the last minute agreed to cooperate with investigators when a source, Rove, gave him permission to do so.

Cooper's employer, Time Inc., also turned over Cooper's e-mail and notes.

One of the e-mails was a note from Cooper to his boss in which he said he had spoken to Rove, who described the wife of former U.S. Ambassador and Bush administration critic Joe Wilson as someone who "apparently works" at the CIA, Newsweek magazine reported.

Within days of the July 11, 2003, e-mail, Cooper's byline was on a Time article identifying Wilson's wife by name — Valerie Plame.

Her identity was first disclosed by columnist Robert Novak.

The e-mail did not say Rove had disclosed the name, but it made clear that Rove had discussed the issue.

That ran counter to what McClellan has been saying.

For example, in September and October 2003, McClellan's comments about Rove included the following: "The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved," "It was a ridiculous suggestion," and, "It's not true."

Reporters seized on the subject Monday, pressing McClellan to either repeat the denials or explain why he can't now.

"I have said for quite some time that this is an ongoing investigation and we're not going to get into discussing it," McClellan replied.

Asked whether Rove committed a crime, McClellan said, "This is a question relating to an ongoing investigation."

Rove declined to comment Monday and referred questions to his attorney.

Last year, he said, "I didn't know her name and didn't leak her name."

The Rove disclosure was an embarrassment for a White House that prides itself on not leaking to reporters and has insisted that Rove was not involved in exposing Plame's identity.

The disclosure also left in doubt whether Bush would carry out his promise to fire anyone found to have leaked the CIA operative's identity.

Rove is one of the president's closest confidants — the man Bush has described as the architect of his re-election, and currently deputy White House chief of staff.

Rove's conversation with Cooper took place five days after Plame's husband suggested in a New York Times op-ed piece that the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Wilson has since suggested his wife's name was leaked as retaliation.

The e-mail that Cooper wrote to his bureau chief said Wilson's wife authorized a trip by Wilson to Africa.

The purpose was to check out reports that Iraq had tried to obtain yellowcake uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

Wilson's subsequent public criticism of the administration was based on his findings during the trip that cast serious doubt on the allegation that Iraq had tried to obtain the material.

Luskin, Rove's lawyer, said his client did not disclose Plame's name.

Luskin declined to say how Rove found out that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and refused to say how Rove came across the information that it was Wilson's wife who authorized his trip to Africa.

Rove's lawyer says his client has done nothing wrong.

"In the conversation, Karl is warning Cooper not to get too far out in front of the story," Luskin said.

"There were false allegations out there that Vice President Cheney sent Wilson to Niger and that Wilson had reported back to Cheney about his trip to Niger."

"Neither was true."

"A fair-minded reading of Cooper's e-mail is that Rove was trying to discourage Time magazine from circulating false allegations about Cheney, not trying to encourage them by saying anything about Wilson or his wife."

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and a private group, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, called on Bush to suspend Roves security clearances, shutting him out of classified meetings.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., asked the Republican chairman of the House Government Reform Committee to hold a hearing where Rove would testify.

Rove should resign or the president should fire him, said Tom Matzzie, Washington director of the liberal advocacy group, MoveOn PAC.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., asked Rove to detail any conversations he had about Plame before her name surfaced publicly in Novak's column.
___

On the Net:

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov

"Popular Parkinson's drug linked to gambling - Compulsive behaviors may be side effect of Mirapex, research suggests"

The Similarities of Problem Gamblers and Substance Abusers

There is fresh evidence that problem gamblers have personality profiles similar to substance abusers.

Updated: 4:00 p.m. ET July 11, 2005

CHICAGO - Joe Neglia was a retired government intelligence worker with Parkinson’s disease when he suddenly developed what he calls a gambling habit from hell.

After losing thousands of dollars playing slot machines near his California home several times a day for nearly two years, Neglia stumbled across an Internet report linking a popular Parkinson’s drug he used with compulsive gambling.

“I thought, 'Oh my God, this must be it,”’ he said.

Three days after stopping the drug, Mirapex, “all desire to gamble just went away completely."

"I felt like I had my brain back.”

A Mayo Clinic study published Monday in July’s Archives of Neurology describes 11 other Parkinson’s patients who developed the unusual problem while taking Mirapex or similar drugs between 2002 and 2004.

Doctors have since identified 14 additional Mayo patients with the problem, said lead author Dr. M. Leann Dodd, a Mayo psychiatrist.

“It’s certainly enough for us to be cautious as we are using it,” Dodd said.

“We wouldn’t want them to have some kind of financial ruin or difficulties that could be prevented.”

Compulsive gambling, sex and shopping

Dr. Leo Verhagen, a Parkinson’s specialist at Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center who was not involved in the study, says he and some colleagues all have a few patients who developed compulsive gambling while taking Mirapex, a drug that relieves tremors and stiffness.

The behavior usually disappears when the drug dose is lowered, Verhagen said.

He praised the Mayo article for raising awareness for doctors and patients.

Neglia, 54, now living in Millersville, Md., was not treated at Mayo or involved in the study.

He said the problem is underreported “because of the embarrassment factor” and is one of several patients suing manufacturer Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc., accusing the company of failing to adequately warn patients about the potential side effects.

California attorney Daniel Kodam, who filed the lawsuit last year, said he’s spoken with more than 200 Mirapex patients who developed compulsive behaviors, including excessive gambling, sex and shopping.

He is seeking to have the complaint certified as a nationwide class-action lawsuit.

A similar suit has been filed in Canada, Kodam said.

Parkinson’s disease is a disorder of the central nervous system that affects more than 1 million Americans.

Neglia said he has contacted the Food and Drug Administration but that the agency has failed to act on numerous adverse reaction reports about Mirapex.

An FDA spokeswoman said the agency is examining the reports to determine if there’s any connection to the drug but declined to say how many it has received.

Katherine King O’Connor, a spokeswoman for the Ridgefield, Conn.-based Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, said there’s no scientific evidence that Mirapex causes the problem.

Still, the company revised Mirapex’s package insert earlier this year to include compulsive behavior among potential side effects after receiving “rare” reports — all after the drug was approved for U.S. use in 1997, O’Connor said.

'Like a light switch being turned off'

Mirapex was among top-selling Parkinson’s drugs last year, with more than $200 million in U.S. sales, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical information and consulting firm.

Mirapex, or pramipexole, reduces tremors and the slow, stiff movements that are a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease.

It belongs to a class of drugs that mimic the effects of dopamine, a brain chemical that controls movement and is deficient in Parkinson’s disease.

Mirapex targets dopamine receptors in a brain region associated with emotions that include pleasure and reward-seeking behavior, Dodd said.

It can also cause extreme sudden sleepiness.

It is sometimes used alone or with the mainstay Parkinson’s drug, levodopa.

Though a few of the Mayo patients took related drugs, Dodd said most used Mirapex.

They included a 68-year-old man who lost more than $200,000 at casinos over six months and a 41-year-old computer programmer who became “consumed” with Internet gambling, losing $5,000 within a few months.

Dodd said Mayo doctors now ask patients using the drugs if they have suddenly taken up gambling.

Affected patients are usually switched to different drugs or doses, and the result is often dramatic, “like a light switch being turned off when they stopped the drug,” she said.

"Nat'l Guard Misses Recruiting Goal Again"

By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer

24 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Army National Guard, a cornerstone of the U.S. force in Iraq, missed its recruiting goal for at least the ninth straight month in June and is nearly 19,000 soldiers below its authorized strength, military officials said Monday.

The Army Guard was seeking 5,032 new soldiers in June but signed up only 4,337, a 14 percent shortfall, according to statistics released Monday by the Pentagon.

It is more than 10,000 soldiers behind its year-to-date goal of almost 45,000 recruits, and has missed its recruiting target during at least 17 of the last 18 months.

"The recruiting environment remains difficult in terms of economic conditions and alternatives," the Army said in a statement released Monday.

"We are concerned about meeting the fiscal year 2005 recruiting missions, but we are confident that our recruiting initiatives will take hold and the American public will respond."

Jack Harrison, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau, said that despite the shortfall, the service is still able to meet its commitments to the Pentagon as well as to state governors, who call on the Guard during disasters and other emergencies.

Some governors have complained about shortages of troops and equipment in their Guard units, prompting the Guard to set a goal of keeping half of each state's Guard forces at home at any given time.

The Pentagon has already significantly reduced its use of all Guard and reserve forces in the last two years.

In April 2003, during the height of the Iraq invasion, some 224,000 of them across all the services were mobilized for all federal missions both at home and overseas; that figure now stands at 138,000, according to Pentagon statistics.

Harrison acknowledged the heavy use of the Guard in missions in Iraq and Afghanistan has affected recruiting efforts, but noted that the service is ahead of its goals in retaining soldiers who have the option to get out.

"We have folks that are coming back from long periods of time in Iraq and Afghanistan who are reenlisting," he said.

Guard troops make up more than one-third of the soldiers in Iraq, numbering six brigades plus a division headquarters.

In the next rotation of troops, to take place over the next two years, the Guard's portion of the total force in Iraq is expected to drop substantially as newly reorganized active-duty Army units come on-line and take up more duties there, officials said.

In total, the Army Guard has about 331,000 soldiers, 94.5 percent of its authorized strength of 350,000, officials said.

Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke said the Army Guard last made its monthly goal in September 2004, when it exceeded its target by 27 recruits.

The last time it made its goal before that was December 2003.

Harrison, however, said the Army Guard had not met its monthly recruiting goal for 20 straight months, since October 2003.

Officials could not immediately explain the discrepancy.

The Army Guard also missed its annual recruiting goals for 2003 and 2004, Krenke said.

The entire Army is suffering from recruiting problems, but the other components of the service — the active-duty force and the Reserve — made their goals for June.

Both, however, remain well behind their annual goals, which they measure from October 2004 to September 2005.

The regular Army has recruited 47,121 soldiers, or 86 percent of its goal of 54,935 for this point in the year.

It is trying to reach 80,000 by the end of September.

Officials are becoming less hopeful they will make it, even though the summer is considered the high season for recruiting, as recent high school graduates look for jobs.

To deal with the problem, the Army has increased the number of recruiters in its ranks, and augmented incentives for those signing up.

"We think these adjustments will begin to take hold in the upcoming months," the Army statement said.

The Army Reserve has recruited 15,540 soldiers, or 79 percent of its goal of 19,753 at this point in the year.

All three components of the Army are ahead on their efforts to retain current soldiers.

Officials credit that to a desire on the part of the troops to finish the mission of making Iraq a stable democracy.

The only other arm of the military that missed its June recruiting goal was the Navy Reserve, which fell 8 percent short and remains the same percentage behind its annual goal of 8,733 recruits.

The active Navy, Air Force and Marines made their monthly goals, and are at or ahead of their year-to-date targets, the Pentagon said.

The Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve and Marine Corps Reserve made their June goals; of those, the Air Force Reserve and Marine Reserve are at or ahead of their year-to-date goals.

The Air National Guard is 17 percent behind its year-to-date goal of 7,619 recruits.

The Air Force and Navy are seeing far less action in Iraq and Afghanistan than their counterparts in the ground combat forces of the Army and Marines, who have suffered most of the casualties.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

Is Judith Miller really not disclosing names because it's against her principles, or is she protecting someone in the administration (probably Rove) for other reasons?

Is there going to be a pay off for her for keeping silent?

Or am I being too cynical?

A.B.